How To Get Funding For Web Site Improvements

Companies are waking up to the importance of the online customer experience. Unfortunately, a lack of funding makes it difficult for many customer experience professionals to improve their company's Web site. To help firms get the funding they need, we interviewed 19 organizations that recently completed major Web site redesigns to find out how they got funding. Our analysis shows that the best approach is to create a multilayered business case that appeals to executives on three levels: authority, logic, and emotion. To close the deal, customer experience professionals should adopt well-known principles of persuasion by targeting one or two executives to sell the project to in advance, leveraging the firm's public commitment to customers, and preparing a scaled-back — but still realistic — plan B.