How to keep the website dazzling — The Agile Way

The website is the #1 marketing and sales asset which are working round the clock for the organization. Website is the first interaction of the company with the customer. It becomes essential for any company to keep their 24 X 7 sales person in best shape & size. Hence, in today’s ever changing scenario, marketers are looking for strategies to

Continuous up gradation & improvement of the website over time 

Enable data based decisions on the website features to help achieve the goals

Traditionally, any website is being designed, developed & deployed once in a lifetime with a complete revamp in average 2 years. This is typical waterfall model & against the Agile philosophy of incremental value add. Through this article, we will try to understand the implementation of the agile process during the website development as well as management.

1. Website development

Website development is not a one time job. If you are doing it for the first time, then the website can be developed in an agile manner as discussed below

1. Requirement Capturing

Ideally, the website development should start with a requirement capturing strategy.

Requirement Capturing Strategy should start with the wishlist across the departments. It should involve an understanding of business needs, customer understanding through persona development, value proposition & others. Key thing is to think like the customer & develop specifications accordingly.

2. Core Features Identification

Use the Pareto Principle i.e. 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Segregate the wish lists into must-have & nice-to-have features. Concentrate on implementation plan of the must-have features.

3. The First Launch

Launch the first version of the website. It may not be the perfect, but it should be manageable.

2. Continuous improvement

In today’s technology world, website can support millions of features & options. But the crux lies in identifying the relevant & crucial features for the company. Focusing on the key options helps in driving the best results. Once the website is launched, below framework is good for managing the website improvements & upgrades.

We need to analyse the value being provided to our customer as well as user experience of the website through feedback. We can use NPS ( Net Promoter Score ) mechanism to understand the impact of our design & content on the customer. That NPS with the data of customer funnel on the website will help in deriving the key improvement areas

Continuous improvement cycle

Continuous improvement cycle helps in implementing the initiatives towards a common goal. The goals should be

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time bound).

Measure the performance of the existing website on the defined goals. Brainstorm & identify the features needs to build or optimized to reach the goal. In this scenario, PDCA model comes the expected impact & effort. Then build the feature as we do it in an Agile Sprint. Then we need to check the implemented features & their impact. We can act on the data by implementing the learnings in choosing next set of the high impact stories.

At the end, I would like to conclude it with the quote from David Lim

“Successful people aren’t those who have everything, but those who use everything they already have.”