What are you trying to do?
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 What is your organization's objective? How will your organization achieve this objective? How do you measure this success – what will it look like? Sound obvious? Then write it down and check everything that you do back against this 'mantra'. You will find that it is probably not as obvious - or as easy - as you may have thought. Lets spend some time looking at 'Business Strategy' and why understanding it is important to effective web publishing.
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The 'top of the pyramid' — it's a nice view from up here!
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The temptation with web publishing is to start in your comfort zone. Most authors start writing, most designers start designing, most developers start developing, and on and on we go. As the saying goes, if you're a hammer, most problems look like a nail! You may not be the source of the organization's strategy and you may not even be able to influence it in any significant way, however if you are going to be an effective web publisher, you had better take more than a passing interest in understanding it. So before we jump into the 'middle of the pyramid' - design, structure, content, and message - let's set the goal posts, so that when we get to 'effectiveness', we understand what the objectives, measures and signs of success are.
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What to do (practically speaking)?
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There is a lot of material available on business strategy and planning if you have to start at the beginning, otherwise, if you already have a business plan, objective statement or other marketing material, grab it, it will be a great place to start. You can go the whole way and do market research, competitor analysis, Porter's 5 Forces, SWOT analysis, and so on. If you just want a quick way to move to the next step - website strategy - then summarize the key objectives of your organization to make sure you have the basics covered by completing our business worksheet. You can print the page and fill it out manually, or you can complete the online form and have it send you back an email summary. We will also combine your submitted material with other submissions to publish some aggregated findings in the future (individual responses will not be identifiable). We will even send you back some comments if you want some advice.
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