Digital Project Checklist: 7 Steps to Ensure Success

(1) Prioritize Your Audience

Who exactly are you going after? In 95% of cases, your target audience isn’t “everyone.” To create a worthwhile user experience, you’ll need to define your target market strategy. Begin by determining your primary and secondary audiences.

Now for some helpful sources:

• Google Analytics: Jam-packed with insights—from user demographics and locations to site acquisition trends— Google Analytics gives you reams of useful data.
• Facebook: If your audience numbers over 5,000, try Facebook’s Audience Insights tool. It offers demographic data along with category-level rankings of commonly “liked” pages among your current followers.
• Sales Reports/Billing Records: Whether your business is retail- or service-driven, your accounting department likely has some key data. Understanding your top-selling product or most profitable months are key audience-defining nuggets to start with.

(2) Build Bridges

Digital projects tend to stall, or grind to a halt, without solid cross-department communication. Break down the silos. No matter what area you happen to be in, sales, marketing, customer service, IT, operations, accounting, or HR—begin by getting everyone on the same page.

Start by convening a strategy session and make sure you’re seeing the project through the eyes of each stakeholder:

• What is the point of this project?
• How will your mobile app, website redesign, or software application serve customers/clients?
• Will it have a negative or positive impact on our department?

Note individual feedback and make a point of circling back to them often to be sure things are going to plan from their perspective.

(3) Audit Your Digital Footprint

Would you order merchandise without first taking inventory? Course not. Same goes for your digital environment. Take stock of any software or digital tools your organization uses on a routine basis. It will come in handy when determining potential software integrations aimed toward cost savings or productivity. Also, schedule time with IT to get the lowdown on technical or security requirements.

(4) Evaluate & Document Business Rules

If you’ve been dealing with annoying procedures or outdated processes, it’s high time you get them sorted. This means officially laying down your business rules. As you get into development, you will undoubtedly begin to see If/Then scenarios crop up. Some scenarios may seem obvious. But that won’t stop your development partner from wanting clear-cut rules. Here are some basic examples:

• An order must exceed $75.00 US Dollars to qualify for free shipping
• A user must provide a name and email to access and download a white paper
• A user must create an online account to sign up for service
• And so forth

(5) Define Success

To stay on task, it’s important to know what success looks like well in advance. Consider documenting the following before launch:

• Success Criteria: Determine and prioritize the project timeframe, scope, and cost
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s): Confirm your success metrics: monthly users, new leads, or sales attributions
• Success Statement: Craft a statement that anchors and validates every project decision moving forward. To hone it down, try this mad-lib style exercise:

(6) Keep Stakeholders Engaged

Once digital projects gain momentum, stakeholder engagement tends to trail off. Don’t let this happen. Before your project timeline gets hectic, map out a check-in process with each stakeholder. Remember the notes you took during the stakeholder strategy session? Use them to cover the areas that matter most to them.

(7) Consult A Technology Expert

Selecting the right development partner is crucial to your success. Whether you’re a startup, an agency, or a Fortune 500, Lelander has been keeping digital projects on the rails, and on budget, for over a decade. Make success a foregone conclusion. Let’s talk about your next project.