WordCamp Tampa – Research and Discovery Phase by James Tryon

James Tryon
thewpvalet.com
2014-10-04 10.26.18
  • Each project is different
    • Explore the problems
    • Challenges
    • Goals
    • Define full scope and vision of the project together
    • Works in an agile manner
  • Internal Review meeting
    • Review client questionnaire
    • client sites
    • creative brief
  • Get paid for research and discovery phase
  • Planning
    • Research
    • goal planning
    • Target audience
    • User stories
    • Competitor analysis
    • Content strategy – basic
    • Project audit (sometimes)
    • Content strategy
Story:  Client was getting 250K hits a day.  60% mobile but had no mobile ads.  After adding mobile ads, added 100K in revenue.
  • Kick off meeting
    • You want to get to know the project, the business and the audiences of your client
    • Open the floodgates
    • Sky is the limit
    • Write down everything you could ever want
      • Needed
      • Nice to have
      • Cool but not really needed now
    • Time
      • Small project
        • Half day with client
        • Half day internal
      • Larger project
        • Broken up across days to not burn out the client
    • Everyone who is going to be involved in the project should be in the meeting
  • Who’s your target audience and why??
  • User stories
    • Use to define goals for yourself
    • “As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>”
    • Example:
      • As a customer representative, I want to search for my customers by their first and last name to fine the customer faster.
      • As a reader, I want to be able to sign up for a newsletter so that I can get updates
  • Questions we try to answer during our kickoff meeting
  • Meeting Questions
    • Problem statement : What problem do you want to solve?
    • Stakeholders : Who do you answer to?  Who is involved in this project?
    • Users:  Who are your users?
    • Risks : What risks are we afraid of?  What is the worst case scenario?  What is your biggest concern?
    • Assumptions
      • Examples:
      • Client will provide high quality videos in a timely fashion
      • Client will provide high quality photos in a timely fashion
      • Client will provide descriptions for products
      • Client will provide feedback on layout designs in a timely fashion
    • List of Features NOT to be developed
  • Stakeholder meeting
    • When working on large projects with several stakeholders we meet with all of them.
    • Try to have one-on-one time with each stakeholder to be able to pick their brain.
    • What is important to them without the influence from everyone else in the meeting.
  • Project Audit
    • Only used when a site already exists
    • Make sure to charge for project audit
    • Included
      • Define overall Goals
      • Review client feedback
      • Problems with current site
      • Define target audience
      • Current navigations
      • New site map
      • Question everything
      • Review every page
      • Review every section
      • Have a stand alone page for header and footer
      • Overall thoughts?
    • Outline any new features or sections not on the current site
    • Define any possible or key plugins
  • Possible content strategies
    • How and when to use tags and categories
    • What custom post types does the project need?
    • What taxonomies does the project need?
    • What parent categories to start with?
    • Set a game plan for growth.
  • Phase 2:  Things out of scope but planned for the next phase
  • Recap thoughts:  New site: 20 pages.  Redoing a site can be 20-80 page
  • Resources Created
    • Brain dumps
    • Sorted feature list
    • Define goals/ user stories
    • Create user stories
    • Define target audience
    • Site map
    • Basic wireframes (paper)
    • Lots of sketching
    • Stockholder interview
    • Talk about inspiration
    • Basic guides for colors
    • Basic guides for layout
    • Assigned client tasks
    • Start content gathering
    • Compile assists
  • Audits usually take a week