When maintaining, improving, or radically changing your website (or the underlying platform), there are lots of stakeholders involved. Also, the stakes are high since it’s really easy to implement things in a way that is not flexible or otherwise doesn’t really serve the organization well. One problem is the temptation to oil the squeaky wheel, giving undue attention to power users when basic CMS users and external site visitors are more important.
But the only reason to have a website is to serve business goals (or, if you aren’t running a business per se, your organizational goals). Obviously here I am not talking about personal websites, that do not have business goals.
Any organization’s website should be viewed (and managed!) as a product. This means that everything on the site should be toward your organization’s (non-web) goals. So when deciding on what to do next on your website, it should always be viewed through the lens of your business goals.
External visitor needs should be prioritized over any CMS (backend) users, and basic CMS user needs should be prioritized over power user needs. But they all need to be anchored by the business goals. So the starting point should be the business goals. Instead of just listening to the clamor of requests coming in and prioritizing by stakeholder group, ideally you define goals and then prioritize your work program to move toward those goals.
