1. Concept, target audience & goals

The first step is to determine your target audience and goals. Who are you publishing for and what are you trying to achieve? Possibly you’re coming from a print publication and you know this very well — then it’s only necessary to refine your goals for the online context. Some questions that you can ask yourself during this phase:

• How are my readers going to find my publication? Using a mailing, linked from my site, using search engines, through social media?
• What kind of content do I want to present to the reader? Do I have any good sources of photography? Do I want to include any extra features, such as video or interactivity?
• What is my visual style? What kind of look & feel will my publication use? How will it be branded? Are we using an existing (corporate) identity? Do we need to fit in with other communication materials?
• In case of marketing publications: What are my conversion goals? How am I going to engage my reader? What triggers them? What are our call-to-actions?
• Do I want to have any integration with existing online services, such as my website, my webshop or social media channels?
• Is there any specific functionality that the publication needs?

Deliverable: publication guidelines

Next step: Page plan & publication structure