Alignment is the process of getting everything going in the same direction. 

Alignment is a simple concept. Think about it in terms of walking to the corner store. If you left foot is going north and your right foot is going south, you are going to have a hard time reaching the store. If the store is north of you and both feet are going south there is still a small probability that you will reach the store. You will just have to walk around the world to get there. When all aspects of a complex situation or organization are in alignment, the path is easy to follow.

The same is true in business. If you want to reach your business goals everything in your company must be aligned with those goals. Creating alignment in your web site design requires that you know how your web site is aligned with your business goals. Without this, your web development is hit-or-miss at best.

How do you create alignment?

We look at alignment as a series of cause and effect links. (For more information on cause and effect and alignment, subscribe to our online newsletter.)

• Advertising causes store traffic
• Store traffic causes sales
• Sales causes profits

Our first step in creating a web site design is to ask "What are your business goals?"

Once we have your business goals we can begin to develop a set of site goals that are aligned. (IE., if site goals are met you will be closer to meeting your business goals)

As we go through the web development process we are constantly asking "How does this help meet the goals of the site and of the business?"... We constantly follow the cause and effect of each section of the site to it's primary business goal.

What does this do for my business?

Focusing on alignment means that, once the site is complete, we should have a direct cause and effect link from each site section to your primary business goals. Simply put, the site is doing the things that will help you meet your business goals. 

If you have a site that is 100% effective at getting visitors to do something that does not ultimately have an effect on your business goals, the site is still 0% effective.

What kind of results can I expect to see?

Results vary from site to site and depend upon exactly what actions you want the visitor to take and the strength of your content to create a relationship, provide incentives and encourage actions.

However, accurate and on-going measures allow you to determine how effective your site is. They also allow you to gauge the relative effect of any changes you make to the site. You will be able to see if the change increased or decreased the effectiveness.

 Alignment simply insures that to whatever extent your site IS effective, it will be effective at helping you meet your business goals.