Decide how you'll know it worked

A brief that can't be checked after launch is a wish list. Three months in, someone will ask whether the site worked. Decide now what you'll look at to answer, while the plan is still on paper.

Start from the site's one job, and turn it into a question you can answer with a yes or a number. Here the job is selling tickets, so the question is: do visitors reach a ticket button? Then name the step that answers it, something a page can count. The build already names it. All five ticket buttons carry the same event name, and each says where it sits. Here's the honest part. On this concept the buttons are demos, so a click stops there and nothing is counted. Real counting waits for an analytics tool and the visitor's consent.

Next, the starting number. For speed there is one. On the fifth of October, the old site's largest element took 4.7 seconds to appear, on a simulated phone over a slow connection. For tickets there isn't one I can show, so the brief asks, and says not known yet. And no target. A target with nothing behind it is a guess with a deadline.

Last, who reads it, and when. On a speculative build that's the client's call, so it's a confirm marker too. In Improve, this list becomes the measurement plan, and that's where the tool gets set up.

Before launch, write each question you'll check, the step it counts, the number you start from, and who reads it. Where there's no number yet, say so.