When creating a new Web site or moving your content over to a new domain (aka "site migration), you need to be sure to construct it properly. Creating a list of the goals you're trying to accomplish will help you stay on track and not get bogged down with the details mid stride!

Important ground rules for building a new site.

• Establish the existing problems or user-perspective experiences you'd like to improve.
• Use statistics to track your progress on the old site versus the new. This way, you can see if your problems are getting resolved.
• Be sure your goals and wish list items are realistic and achievable. Otherwise you are just setting yourself and your team up for failure and frustration.

How to Define & Communicate Your Goals

What is your desired end result? Do you want to sell more of your product online or draw people to your brick-and-mortar store? Include the smoothest user experience possible, unique content, and valuable information about your product.

In order to be a great team leader, you must be able to communicate in a way that everyone will understand. You want to paint a picture that will inform and inspire everyone from your site programmer to your social media expert, if you work with a number of people.

1. Story board: Tell a Story and Paint a Picture - Assess your wants and needs, by asking questions. How is your current site performing? What is or isn't working? How can you or your team members fix this?

   Tell a story about your goals. In our case, we wanted to combine our three different sites into one site with multiple levels and functions of membership access. We told a story to our team of one easy site for all sorts of users. We described the ability to upgrade or downgrade the site at one page. After the whole story was completed, we were able to set out making the goals into reality.

2. Set Clear Goals That Can Be Measured - One of our clear goals was to increase conversions. This can apply to whatever sort of business you run. We wanted to increase membership. But conversion can be signups, downloads, likes, shares, or sales. We wanted to increase the conversion rate and this is something easily measured by analytics and sales.

   Google Analytics is a great place to track your goals. For example: You can send in your ecommerce transactions to Google Analytics, to compare your conversion rates.

3. Set Realistic Goals - The goals for your site need to be vetted by each member of your team. Value the opinion of your team members, and explore each question or concern that may come up.

Be sure your wish list doesn't get out of control.

• Streamline your goals; simple is good!
• Make sure your goals can be accomplished and created by your team members in a reasonable amount of time.
• If goals are nixed by yourself or team members, be sure there are good reasons that are easily explained.
• Keep the focus and motivation raging until the project is completed and polished! It is no small task to get a new or redesigned site off the ground (trust us, we know). Be diligent and keep going!

Let's review - a successful site migration or site's construction depends on an effective team leader. The keys to success are clear communication (including expectations, goals, and timeframes) and a motivated team. Talk first (and often) and track your progress.

And if you're doing a site migration then be sure to share this checklist with your team so you can get the technical aspects right the first time!

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