The Fisherman and Web Strategy: the Allure of the Treasure Chest

We all gasp at the treasures we see when they are already on shore. Sure, sometimes someone gets lucky, but usually the big web site successes we gawk at take a lot of hard work.

A story of two fisherman

Joe "the dreamer"

After watching a documentary about an explorer finding a hundred million dollar undersea bounty, Joe the weekend fisherman decides he wants to find an undersea treasure. The only equipment he has is a fishing rod, reel, and tackle. He starts by trying to snorkel to find a treasure, but after several weekends he finds nothing but seaweed. Then Joe goes out and buys a row boat, oars, and a long rope with a huge hook on it. Rowing out for several weekends in a row, he drops his rope down until it hits the bottom, rows to trawl the bottom, and then hauls the rope up. He finds nothing, and then decides to go back to the shore to fish from the beach like he used to.

Jake "the realist

Jake's friend the weekend fisherman is inspired by the same documentary, and thinks hard about how he can do something bigger. Although he's a motivated guy, he quickly realizes that his day job and other interests are going to get in the way of him getting funding for millions of dollars to find treasure like in the documentary, that might not pay off anyway. He considers getting a metal detector, but wants to be in the water. So he decides to fish for bigger fish, and buys a row boat, oars, and bigger fishing gear. The next weekend he goes out in his rowboat, and catches bigger fish.

The professional treasure hunters

On the same weekend, both Joe and Jake see a ship far from shore drop a little submarine into the water. Later that night, they hear on the evening news about that ship hauling a big treasure from the depths.

Don't be like Joe

So, are you like Joe? Fancy vision but no realistic way to achieve it? Then blaming your equipment when it doesn't work (and not seeing the big fish right below you)? Or like Jake, being inspired by something but riffing off it to achieve something bigger than you had before? Of course, if you are searching untold treasures, then by all means go for it, but make sure you think through a means of achieving it. Make sure you have the governance, technology, product management, sponsorship, content strategy, UI, IA, taxonomy, culture, money, staff, time, focus, and will to make your goal a reality. To stretch the analogy further, here are the elements needed to make a big project happen:

For a small site, only the issues at the top matter. But for a large undertaking, the items toward the bottom are important for any large goals. Just like you probably will not find big treasure in the murky depths of the ocean without very specialized expertise, a large crew, specialized equipment, lots of planning and ongoing logistics, and managing sponsors, the same is true if trying to accomplish something big on the web.

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Don't want to be like Joe? Need help creatively setting goals and the means of achieving them? Contact David Hobbs Consulting.