The Basic Process

Identify Your Stakeholders

These are the people that will be using your website.  There are several kinds of stakeholders, and understanding their needs is critical to your success.  Here are some possible stakeholders:

• Internal Publishers - these are the the people who will be publishing to the website. 
• Public Relations department - they are responsible for communicating the objectives and successes of your organization to the outside world.
• Content Owners / Contributors - these are the people in your organization that provide the information that goes on your website.  For example, they might be 
• External Users - Scientists and other research partners or customers that will use the site to gather information or gain access to other internal systems.
• Employees - If your site is internal, LBL employees, contractors, and other internal users will be relevant.
• The DOE / Congress - they are interested in seeing the output of the work being done.

You can and should conduct some interviews with stakeholders of each type.  Interviews provide good qualitative information.

You can also do surveys to gather more specific, quantitative information, such as which content is most useful.

Use analytics to see what people actually do on your website.

Identify User Needs / Goals

Design the User Experience

Plan and Prepare your Content

Set up your Development Environment

Customize