PS: Your blog’s design is very cool.

Great article though!

I reach the end goal in a different way, which I’ve found the client’s tend to understand better. Client = WHO? are you (About us), WHAT? do you do (Services, products, etc), HOW? do users get hold of you (Contact us). Users = WHO? are they (User personas), WHAT? do they do on the site (User scenarios), HOW? did they get there (Search, Social media, Direct, etc). The answers reach the same conclusions, but in a different way.

I always find there’s a difference between what the client wants to say and what the users want, and as a strategist it is important for us to show the client how important the users are.

Living in Sweden now and learning the difference in how client’s think in this part of the world has also changed my working model.

In our experience there are two main reasons for clients beginning to stray from an approved strategy.

1) It was not tied to their goals as a business, after all.
2) The plan did not have the internal backing it needed.

A combination of the two is not uncommon. We agree with you that we always need to help our clients not only find the right plan, but also stick to it. We can achieve this by providing education, supporting them internally, offering alternative points of view, and also by challenging their assertions along the way. A friendly devil’s advocate is a good thing to have on board.

ie: The user goals and site objectives drive everything else from the information architecture, navigation, design, functionality, etc… you change the user goals and site objectives and everything else should shift around it.

Also, with experience one can get more agile in choosing the right path/strategy, however the market is so unpredictable at times that we have to be lean in taking the right path at any given time.

With that said, I always like to draw a strategy or I’d like to call it a success-path. In other words A leads to B leads to C, etc. But, always (and I cannot stress it enough) we leave room for the unknown, happy accidents, and surprises within the scope of global planning.

Great article & thanks for sharing.

Cheers.

Other than that small bit, INCREDIBLE article! Thanks so much!

We believe in this totally at The House London Ltd. KISS (Keep it simple stupid!).

Nice one!

In truth, a strategy is more than a plan: it’s about defining how you intend to meet the goals. Strategy is often confused with “tactics”, which correctly refer to the steps you will take in order to realize a strategy. Why is this differentiation important? A strategy is a direction, but there may be several tactics that will help you “do it”. One of the key activities (not mentioned in your example) is never to dive for the first idea or tactic that comes along. It’s to evaluate a range of options to see which is the best tactic worth spending the money on in order to get the best results.

While in your example the client knows their audience, in truth if you are building something that comes with user adoption risks, you would want to back your chosen tactic with research to validate that the direction the product wants to head is actually likely to work in the market.

We don’t quite agree with you that defining strategy is necessarily easy. If it was, people would get it right more often. It does become easier, and comes more naturally, with experience however.

You are correct that answering the how-to part requires skill, insight and care. But without a strategy/plan – or with a hastily assembled one – it would be nigh on impossible or at the very least a longer and more costly process (and the end result might be a bit iffy).

Measuring is indeed key, and doesn’t get addressed enough. It’s a topic we hope to write about in future posts.

Also noteworthy, but not mentioned, is that the results of your strategy should be measured. You can’t know your strategy is effective unless you implement ways to track the outcome.