Planning out the 4 phases of the online project: revenue, promotion, production, and evolution/growth. Estimating revenue and profits over time and defining the operations, timescales and costs associated with each phase. Identifying the team that will design, develop and drive the growth of the project.

During this phase, the team must plan out its activities, estimate the costs involved and the revenue that can be achieved by the online project over time. For example, for how long, on average, will our customers keep buying our products and services? How can we estimate this figure accurately? How much do we need to invest in promotion and advertising to attract a sufficient amount of traffic to generate the profits we expect?

Leo: "Think of our project as an onion: the outer layer, inside of which everything else is contained, is the Executive Summary that we have already developed, whereas, in direct contact with the outer layer, are our customers, who are, of course, our source of profit. As such, we need to define a Revenue Plan that takes account of their life cycle and, at the same time, of the evolution of the site. We will then put together a Promotion Plan to promote site visibility, both online and offline. Last of all, we have to plan out how to build the digital environment into which we will welcome our customers. For this, we will need a Production Plan that maps out the activities involved in the creation of our site.”

Jacques: "But how can we work out how successfully we are reaching, attracting and acquiring customers? In other words, to what extent are we turning visitors into customers who will stay with us over time?”

Leo: "You have just defined the 4 phases of the life cycle of the online customer: reach, acquire, convert and retain..."