How to set tasks for the site
All web-studios or interactive agencies start communicating with the client who approached them with in order to find out what he actually needs. Nevertheless, in 15 years of development of the industry, little has changed, and such pearls still occur here.
At the same time, while communicating with a client, his attitude like “let's prescribe these boring goals, tasks , and finally play with fonts” is clearly felt. In the mass, customers do not measure the return on the site: surprisingly, they are interested in the process of working on the site, and not the benefit that it will bring.
')
At the same time, performers, speaking of goal-setting for websites, often speak more about functionality than about goals themselves.
“Goals-tasks” is something like a web developmental cargo-cult: the majority of studios put the airport mock-up from the straw (“The site should provide the visitor with all the necessary information and form a solid company image”) and wait for the canned food.
Let's try to figure out how to properly approach the setting of tasks for the site, in this article in four parts:
Over the past 100 years, humanity has very well learned to sell the necessary and unnecessary things and services, and continues to gain momentum. In order to sell better, marketers created a variety of models for how consumers make purchasing decisions.
Every marketer has heard about AIDA (which is almost 100 years old) and about the “sales funnel”. Features of these models in their linearity: it is believed that the consumer moves in a straight line, at each stage removing some kind of objection and approaching the purchase. Linear models have been actively operated so far (including lead generation and conversion, which are fashionable in Internet marketing), but in many industries they no longer work.
The fact is that today's consumers are arranged in the same way as before: they are trying to solve their problems with maximum benefit for themselves. But consumers have new opportunities to quickly receive a huge amount of information from other people, and they began to behave a little differently.
Between the moment when the consumer remembered the set of brands capable of solving his problem, and the moment of purchasing a product or service, the stage of “active evaluation of alternatives” significantly increased. It is at this stage that we climb into the Internet to study the characteristics of the product, read reviews from other people, read reviews, and so on.
To understand the current situation, it is highly recommended to familiarize yourself with two models.
The key marketing task of any business (which helps the company's activities on the Internet) is to reach every representative of the target audience at a time when the opportunity to influence his decision is the highest, and to influence him in the most favorable way for the company.
Today, businesses pay a lot of attention to the impact on the consumer at the initial stage and the stage of purchase (using ATL and BTL), but they do not focus on the stages of active evaluation of alternatives and experience, where influence is often the most powerful and valuable.
There are several ideas about which we, as performers, are obliged to inform customers at the pre-project stage of communication with them. Just to make sure they understand what they want. These ideas directly affect goal setting.
Historically, the market refers to sites as software - something like Microsoft Word or Solitaire Klondike, but opening in a browser. We borrowed some programming languages, an approach to development, and, unfortunately, driven our thinking into frames.
Of course, many sites are more like software: they are services for organizing work, storing data, processing images, etc.
But a huge number of sites (which include almost all corporate sites and online stores) are much closer in meaning to advertising . They provide business communication with consumers in an attempt to convince them to buy (or continue to buy) a product or service.
Of course, many sites contain both components at the same time, as seen in the examples below. When you talk with a client about his site, it is useful to understand how much there should be from the place of communication, and how much - from the product.
Logical, but often forgotten observation - the site does not work without visitors. The audience. Traffic Living people who will go to the site, because they need something there.
The flow of visitors to the site provides other tools - search engine optimization, contextual and banner advertising, outdoor advertising (with the site address on it), social media and so on.
Therefore, when we talk about the tasks of the site (and not the Internet activity of the business as a whole), we should only talk about how the site will affect the flow of visitors with certain characteristics. Convert. Promote to target action.
From the point of view of the visitor, the site is a set of pages linked to each other by links. From a business point of view, a site is a set of points of contact with a visitor, which should have a beneficial effect on his future behavior (and not just some awareness, awareness, etc.).
In the case of a site as a place of communication, it is possible to influence behavior in one and only way - with the help of content that is most valuable to a visitor at a given time in terms of content and design.
It is content that plays a crucial role in keeping users on the “consumer travel” trajectory that is necessary for a business, as it creates unique experiences and experiences associated with a business or brand (see Google for “content marketing”, “storytelling”, “branded content” "And adjacent).
A striking example of a content-centered approach is contained in Coca-Cola's strategy for working in new media. I highly recommend watching the presentation in two parts .
In the case of a site as a product, the main role is still played by a positive user experience of use, which is why engineering matters such as UX (user experience) and usability are important for them.
Customers of the sites are accustomed to the approach “I will establish the main page, and then let the manager understand himself”. The development of the main page is usually focused on, and the internal ones are “drawn”.
However, the site as a place of communication today has no really “main” page. Such a site is a set of pages, on any of which the visitor can get first, and the first is the main thing in keeping it on the site.
Of course, most sites are built on the principle of "tree", because a) we are so used to, and b) it is quite natural from the point of view of navigation. But in reality, the visitor flow map looks like this.
It would seem that a conclusion from this is that all pages are equally important, and the development of each page should be given equal attention.
But this is also not true. Each page is as important as the degree of influence on a particular consumer at a particular point in time.
If the “Company History” section is really only needed by the director of the company and does not affect any target groups in any way, it can be worked out with less thoroughness. If the largest potential customers (of which only 0.01% of all site visitors) need convincing evidence of the company's reliability in order to think about cooperation, then it needs to be worked out very carefully.
For a long time, the minds of webmasters and marketers were occupied by the unwritten “three-click rule”, according to which the user should be able to find any information of interest on the site in three clicks.
Today this rule is morally obsolete. If we are working on existing demand, then visitors get to the site by clicking from a search engine on a relevant request, with contextual or display advertising. Ideally, they should immediately go to the page with the information they need at the moment, without making any more clicks at all.
We propose a “one-click rule”: the user should have enough to study the page where he has got to make one click, the most beneficial for him in terms of “consumer travel”.
If the content, product, service is of value to the consumer and he is involved in communication, it does not matter what amount of clicks he makes to satisfy his need.
If the content is completely useless for the consumer, the best click that he can and should do is click on the cross in the browser that closes the window or tab.
First, let us see what is wrong with the cargo-formulation of the “goal-task”, on the analogy with a hammer as a tool for nailing.
Thus, the site itself cannot have a goal , as there is no goal of a hammer lying on the table. The goal is a business project for online promotion.
The site can be designed to solve certain problems , and the problem will be solved by the business (to hammer a nail, you must wave with a hammer), and not the site itself.
Those tasks for which the site is designed should be dictated by a formal or implied strategy (business, marketing, sales), and linked to a certain system that the customer and the web studio should understand.
The purpose of the tool entails its functional characteristics: the hammer must be hard and heavy, have a comfortable handle and not collapse for a long time. Industrial designers, based on these characteristics (or requirements, call it what you want) and using their techniques, come up with a hammer design, select materials and create a tool.
The purpose of the site is effective communication with consumers at different stages of their “journey”, helping to best realize their needs. Consequently, lower-level tasks that the site helps solve are associated with exposure to certain visitors.
The task statement should answer the questions: which people exactly and what exactly should be done as a result of interaction with the site. For each formulation, you should be able to explain why they should do exactly that.
For example:
I see the outrage of the most advanced marketers: “Where are the specific numbers ?!”
Let's separate the wheat from the chaff. The formulation of the problem must imply the physical measurability of the results of the efforts that the business has made to solve it. The wording of the examples is measurable, directly or indirectly:
They can not be taken from previous experience, from the head or from the sites of competitors, because they do not fit. Who said that converting an online store to 0.1% is bad? It all depends on the audience, products, position in the market, the company's fame, the quality of incoming traffic, and only at the very end - on the quality of the site development.
The correct approach to working on the site is as follows.
It is important to emphasize here that the Internet presence from a business point of view is an iterative process. It is necessary to constantly measure its effectiveness and to constantly “sharpen” the toolkit.
Today, in the “usual for the market” process of developing a website, some of these stages are either discarded or carried out by web studios (which are not marketers), which is why investments in online promotion are not as effective as they could be.
At the same time, while communicating with a client, his attitude like “let's prescribe these boring goals, tasks , and finally play with fonts” is clearly felt. In the mass, customers do not measure the return on the site: surprisingly, they are interested in the process of working on the site, and not the benefit that it will bring.
')
At the same time, performers, speaking of goal-setting for websites, often speak more about functionality than about goals themselves.
“Goals-tasks” is something like a web developmental cargo-cult: the majority of studios put the airport mock-up from the straw (“The site should provide the visitor with all the necessary information and form a solid company image”) and wait for the canned food.
Let's try to figure out how to properly approach the setting of tasks for the site, in this article in four parts:
- Consumer behavior in the “digital age” - how does today's consumer differ from yesterday's, and how does this affect business?
- The site as a tool of influence - how does today's site differ from yesterday’s, and what should be remembered when deciding to create a new site?
- How to set tasks for the site? - specific recommendations for customers and studios. For recipes - scroll to here.
- An example of the “Site Assignment” block is a demonstration of what should be the result.
Consumer Behavior in the Digital Era
Over the past 100 years, humanity has very well learned to sell the necessary and unnecessary things and services, and continues to gain momentum. In order to sell better, marketers created a variety of models for how consumers make purchasing decisions.
Every marketer has heard about AIDA (which is almost 100 years old) and about the “sales funnel”. Features of these models in their linearity: it is believed that the consumer moves in a straight line, at each stage removing some kind of objection and approaching the purchase. Linear models have been actively operated so far (including lead generation and conversion, which are fashionable in Internet marketing), but in many industries they no longer work.
The fact is that today's consumers are arranged in the same way as before: they are trying to solve their problems with maximum benefit for themselves. But consumers have new opportunities to quickly receive a huge amount of information from other people, and they began to behave a little differently.
Between the moment when the consumer remembered the set of brands capable of solving his problem, and the moment of purchasing a product or service, the stage of “active evaluation of alternatives” significantly increased. It is at this stage that we climb into the Internet to study the characteristics of the product, read reviews from other people, read reviews, and so on.
To understand the current situation, it is highly recommended to familiarize yourself with two models.
- Consumer Decision Journey, McKinsey, 2009 - source in the McKinsey Quarterly magazine in English and published on the Mitya Voskresensky blog in Russian.
- “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT, Zero Moment of Truth), Google, 2011 - initiative website in English and book in PDF in Russian .
The key marketing task of any business (which helps the company's activities on the Internet) is to reach every representative of the target audience at a time when the opportunity to influence his decision is the highest, and to influence him in the most favorable way for the company.
Today, businesses pay a lot of attention to the impact on the consumer at the initial stage and the stage of purchase (using ATL and BTL), but they do not focus on the stages of active evaluation of alternatives and experience, where influence is often the most powerful and valuable.
Site as a tool of influence
There are several ideas about which we, as performers, are obliged to inform customers at the pre-project stage of communication with them. Just to make sure they understand what they want. These ideas directly affect goal setting.
1. Site as a place of communication and site as a product
Historically, the market refers to sites as software - something like Microsoft Word or Solitaire Klondike, but opening in a browser. We borrowed some programming languages, an approach to development, and, unfortunately, driven our thinking into frames.
Of course, many sites are more like software: they are services for organizing work, storing data, processing images, etc.
But a huge number of sites (which include almost all corporate sites and online stores) are much closer in meaning to advertising . They provide business communication with consumers in an attempt to convince them to buy (or continue to buy) a product or service.
- A site as a product is an analogue of a real physical product, service or software. The site visitor solves his problems directly with it. These also include news sites and themed portals.
- A site as a place of communication is a dedicated space for communication with visitors, not directly related to the solution of their tasks, and intended to convince them to buy a product or service. Even if the site has a calculator of the cost of a product or service, it does not make it a site-product.
Of course, many sites contain both components at the same time, as seen in the examples below. When you talk with a client about his site, it is useful to understand how much there should be from the place of communication, and how much - from the product.
| Place of communication | Product |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
2. The site does not work without visitors
Logical, but often forgotten observation - the site does not work without visitors. The audience. Traffic Living people who will go to the site, because they need something there.
The flow of visitors to the site provides other tools - search engine optimization, contextual and banner advertising, outdoor advertising (with the site address on it), social media and so on.
Therefore, when we talk about the tasks of the site (and not the Internet activity of the business as a whole), we should only talk about how the site will affect the flow of visitors with certain characteristics. Convert. Promote to target action.
- “We want a website with 10,000 visitors per day” is a task for the internet strategy as a whole, but not for the site individually.
- “We want an average of 1% of visitors who came to the topic requests from search engines to fill out an application form every day” - this is much more similar to the task for the site.
3. Site needs content.
From the point of view of the visitor, the site is a set of pages linked to each other by links. From a business point of view, a site is a set of points of contact with a visitor, which should have a beneficial effect on his future behavior (and not just some awareness, awareness, etc.).
In the case of a site as a place of communication, it is possible to influence behavior in one and only way - with the help of content that is most valuable to a visitor at a given time in terms of content and design.
It is content that plays a crucial role in keeping users on the “consumer travel” trajectory that is necessary for a business, as it creates unique experiences and experiences associated with a business or brand (see Google for “content marketing”, “storytelling”, “branded content” "And adjacent).
A striking example of a content-centered approach is contained in Coca-Cola's strategy for working in new media. I highly recommend watching the presentation in two parts .
In the case of a site as a product, the main role is still played by a positive user experience of use, which is why engineering matters such as UX (user experience) and usability are important for them.
4. The place of communication has no main page.
Customers of the sites are accustomed to the approach “I will establish the main page, and then let the manager understand himself”. The development of the main page is usually focused on, and the internal ones are “drawn”.
However, the site as a place of communication today has no really “main” page. Such a site is a set of pages, on any of which the visitor can get first, and the first is the main thing in keeping it on the site.
Of course, most sites are built on the principle of "tree", because a) we are so used to, and b) it is quite natural from the point of view of navigation. But in reality, the visitor flow map looks like this.
It would seem that a conclusion from this is that all pages are equally important, and the development of each page should be given equal attention.
But this is also not true. Each page is as important as the degree of influence on a particular consumer at a particular point in time.
If the “Company History” section is really only needed by the director of the company and does not affect any target groups in any way, it can be worked out with less thoroughness. If the largest potential customers (of which only 0.01% of all site visitors) need convincing evidence of the company's reliability in order to think about cooperation, then it needs to be worked out very carefully.
5. The rule of one click
For a long time, the minds of webmasters and marketers were occupied by the unwritten “three-click rule”, according to which the user should be able to find any information of interest on the site in three clicks.
Today this rule is morally obsolete. If we are working on existing demand, then visitors get to the site by clicking from a search engine on a relevant request, with contextual or display advertising. Ideally, they should immediately go to the page with the information they need at the moment, without making any more clicks at all.
We propose a “one-click rule”: the user should have enough to study the page where he has got to make one click, the most beneficial for him in terms of “consumer travel”.
If the content, product, service is of value to the consumer and he is involved in communication, it does not matter what amount of clicks he makes to satisfy his need.
If the content is completely useless for the consumer, the best click that he can and should do is click on the cross in the browser that closes the window or tab.
How to set tasks for the site?
1. Still, goals or objectives?
First, let us see what is wrong with the cargo-formulation of the “goal-task”, on the analogy with a hammer as a tool for nailing.
| Person | Business | |
|---|---|---|
| Mission What do you want? | Increase the comfort of your life | Increase the comfort of life of owners and employees |
| purpose What exactly wants? | Build an eco-friendly wooden house for the year | Earn digital dollars per year |
| Tasks What actions will be achieved? | - Plan a house - Buy materials - Buy tools - Build a house according to plan | - Plan the process (business and marketing strategies) - Create strategy implementation tools - Implement a strategy |
| Instruments What will help solve the problem? | - Hammer and nails - Saw - Paints and brush | - Site - Search engine optimization - Contextual advertising |
| Purpose of tools How will the tool help solve the problem? | Hammer and nails are needed to fasten the boards between themselves and in this project, this method is more beneficial than the use of screws and screwdrivers, or ropes for binding. | The site is needed for effective communication with consumers at the stage of active evaluation of alternatives, since the demand for the proposed product is formed and is large enough. |
The site can be designed to solve certain problems , and the problem will be solved by the business (to hammer a nail, you must wave with a hammer), and not the site itself.
Those tasks for which the site is designed should be dictated by a formal or implied strategy (business, marketing, sales), and linked to a certain system that the customer and the web studio should understand.
2. Tasks and requirements
The purpose of the tool entails its functional characteristics: the hammer must be hard and heavy, have a comfortable handle and not collapse for a long time. Industrial designers, based on these characteristics (or requirements, call it what you want) and using their techniques, come up with a hammer design, select materials and create a tool.
The purpose of the site is effective communication with consumers at different stages of their “journey”, helping to best realize their needs. Consequently, lower-level tasks that the site helps solve are associated with exposure to certain visitors.
The task statement should answer the questions: which people exactly and what exactly should be done as a result of interaction with the site. For each formulation, you should be able to explain why they should do exactly that.
For example:
- Visitors who are at the stage of active evaluation of alternatives and poorly informed about the product, (who?)
must subscribe to the newsletter (what should they do?) . - Visitors at the stage of active evaluation of alternatives (who?)
should make sure that the high price of the product is explained by the quality of service, when they get to the product page from a search engine (what should they do?) . - The site should provide all users of the company's goods (who?)
opportunity to make a complaint and suggestions (what should I do?) ,
and company representatives (who?) -
respond to the complaint with minimal time (what should I do?) .
3. Measurable results and performance indicators
I see the outrage of the most advanced marketers: “Where are the specific numbers ?!”
Let's separate the wheat from the chaff. The formulation of the problem must imply the physical measurability of the results of the efforts that the business has made to solve it. The wording of the examples is measurable, directly or indirectly:
- The number of new subscriptions to the newsletter from visitors who came from search engines;
- Bounce rate for visitors who came from search engines on thematic requests;
- The presence of a complaint / feedback form and / or a message stating that a client can file a complaint on the main page and on any page where the client can go to a branded query in a search engine;
- The average time that a manager spends on sending a response to a complaint to a client (without taking into account the time required to formulate a response within the company).
They can not be taken from previous experience, from the head or from the sites of competitors, because they do not fit. Who said that converting an online store to 0.1% is bad? It all depends on the audience, products, position in the market, the company's fame, the quality of incoming traffic, and only at the very end - on the quality of the site development.
4. The perfect spherical process of developing a site in a vacuum
The correct approach to working on the site is as follows.
- The customer provides the stated business goals and marketing strategy : what, to whom, when and at what price he plans to sell in order to earn a lot of money.
The business goals are set by the top managers of the Customer: independently or with the help of external business consultants.
Marketing strategy is developed within the company of the Customer, or with the help of a marketing agency. - The customer provides a communicative strategy : with whom, about what, where, when and how does he plan to speak, and what should happen as a result in order for the marketing strategy to be implemented. Including the communication strategy also affects Internet communications.
The part concerning Internet communication can be put in a separate document with the name like “Communication strategy on the Internet” or “Internet presence strategy”.
A global communication strategy is developed within the Customer’s company, or through a marketing, branding or communication agency.
A communication strategy on the Internet can be developed with the help of online or digital agencies, or companies specializing in online consulting.
The purpose of the site, the tasks that the site solves, and the requirements for it should be described here! - If the communication strategy is missing or does not contain clear wording of the tasks, the Customer (independently or with the help of Internet consultants) describes the purpose and objectives of the site, and also prepares the site content (content) and communication policies on the site (content strategy, content plan) that should contribute to the marketing strategy.
- The customer (independently or with the help of online consultants) formulates website performance indicators.
- Web Studio designs the site based on all of the above and develops it.
- The customer (independently or with the help of Internet consultants) sets up tools for measuring performance indicators (Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica, third-party services, own databases or scripts).
- The customer launches the site into operation and (independently or with the help of Internet consultants) begins to measure and analyze the values ​​of the indicators.
- According to the results of the analysis, a return is made to p.4 to improve performance.
It is important to emphasize here that the Internet presence from a business point of view is an iterative process. It is necessary to constantly measure its effectiveness and to constantly “sharpen” the toolkit.
Today, in the “usual for the market” process of developing a website, some of these stages are either discarded or carried out by web studios (which are not marketers), which is why investments in online promotion are not as effective as they could be.
Example block "Site Assignment"
The clinic "Smile-plus" is a modern dental complex, located in the city center, equipped with modern equipment and having a staff of high-class specialists.
The marketing strategy, positioning and communicative principles of the clinic are presented in the document “Marketing Strategy of the Smile Plus Clinic” .
The clinic's website is one of the company's key online communication tools, along with the following tools:
- Search engine optimization
- Online consultations on the portal Doktor.ru,
- Professional group "Dentistry" on Facebook.
A detailed description of the target audience segments, their needs and scenarios of needs realization, as well as the relationship of communication tools and transitions of various consumers between them is presented in the document “Internet presence strategy of the Smile Plus clinic” .1. The purpose of the site
The site is intended for two-way communication of the clinic with two audiences, representatives of each of which may be at different stages of the relationship with the company.
- Clinic clients:
- at the beginning of the stage of active evaluation of alternatives (“Curious”),
- close to decision making (“Potential customers”),
- one-time clinic services ("Consumers"),
- more than once using the services of the clinic ("Parshchiki").
- Professional dentists:
- young professionals in job search ("Interns"),
- highly skilled specialists in job search (“Profi”).
2. Tasks and requirements
The site should contribute to the following tasks. (We answer the question “What should happen as a result of interaction with the site?”)
- "Curious" visitors should do the following:
- make sure that the clinic will solve their problem, and in the best way.
- make sure that one of the key priorities of the clinic is the quality of the services provided,
- realize the level of the cost of the clinic services as fully consistent with the level of services provided,
- remember the name of the company.
- "Potential customers" should do the following:
- find out the cost of the service of interest,
- to make an appointment.
- “Consumers” should do the following:
- go to one of the medical portals and leave a positive review about the clinic,
- send a complaint about the quality of the service through the site, not trying to make a complaint to the medical portals or other Internet resources.
- "Permanent workers" should recommend the company's services to friends, including through social networks.
- "Interns" should make sure that the clinic is the best place to undergo free internship, realize the high requirements for internship applicants, and send your resume.
- "Profi" should be convinced of the stability of the company and the high level of services and their payment, and send your resume.
It is assumed that the site must meet the following requirements. (We answer the question “What should be the site for the tasks to be solved?”, Based on the existing idea of ​​the target audience. These are our hypotheses, in which we are fair.)
- The site should be fully functional and visually appealing on modern smartphones and tablets, as the clinic's users are their active users and, according to independent research, often look for various products and services with their help.
- The maximum site traffic is 30,000 visitors per day. The estimate was obtained on the basis of the total frequency of thematic and branded search queries in the “St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region” region.
3. Website performance indicators
Site performance will be measured using the following metrics:
- The percentage of failures for each of the audiences and stages of the relationship.
- The ratio of the number of visits of “Curious” visitors to the site to the number of their acquaintance with the services and their cost.
- The ratio of the number of visits "Potential customers" to the site to the number of their acquaintance with the cost of services.
- The ratio of the number of visits of "Potential customers" to the site to the number of their entries at the reception.
- The number of positive reviews about the clinic in relation to the number of visits "Consumers" on the site.
- The number of recommendations "Parshchikov" initiated by the site.
- The ratio of calls "Interns" to the number of sent summaries.
- The ratio of “Profi” visits to the number of resumes sent.
The exact method of calculating the metrics should be described after designing the site.
The site will also be used to calculate the following metrics.
- Average response time to a complaint.
- The ratio of the number of complaints left on the site to the number of negative comments about the clinic on other resources.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153323/
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