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.
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