malevole Redesign: Aims

I recently wrote about a middle-ground approach to planning smallish web projects, and am using the malevole redesign as an example.

OK, so here goes with the aims of the project:

Building an audience

I’d rather have a smaller number of regulars popping in every couple of days to check out new things than vast hordes of strangers looking for the same old stuff.

Showing off

I’ve got a big pile of new/odd design and technical ideas and need an ongoing showcase project.

Making life easy

Looking after the site mustn’t be a chore, everything has to be managed through simple interfaces.

Getting people involved

Loads of the best stuff was sent in by readers, e.g. the Amazing Laundrette Sign Competition entries and Toast Leaners’ Club emails.

Learning

Some ideas will work, some will fail, everything’ll be interesting to try out.

Carefully ‘selling out’

If the site makes a bit of money I’ll be able to spend more time on it, but there’s no way anything’ll be allowed to interfere with the stupidity and pointlessness, so even vaguely commercial experiments will be approached with caution.

Tue 28th Mar 2006, 9:51pm GMT

Filed under: Hints and Tips, Planning and Strategy, Web

Comments

Are you going to try to make money from malevole? How could you?

— Dave Beard, 28th Mar, 10:53pm

Is that "How could you?" as in "How would that work then?", or "How could you?" as in "HOW COULD YOU..!?" ?

— Matt Round, 29th Mar, 12:30pm

I thought about that after I wrote it. I meant the first bit really, but I suppose there's a bit of the latter too.

— Dave Beard, 29th Mar, 12:54pm

I'm planning to lure people into entering their credit card details with promises of unending hilarity. Then the site will suddenly be littered with banner ads and popups, and every time they click on a link or type a character they'll be charged 10 cents. It's the future of micropayments.
Or I'll just flog a few T shirts and maybe try out some more unusual things I'm keeping quiet for now. Basically I'd like to cover costs, fund stuff like daft competitions/giveaways, and see what happens.

— Matt Round, 29th Mar, 1:30pm

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