If you have read any of my recent articles you should be familiar by now with the concept of Website Scale.

Website Scale is a means for classifying sites of different types into groups based on shared underlying characteristics. These characteristics are:

• Size
• Activity
• Complexity

The usefulness of this concept is that it can predict similarities in Web Governance between sites that superficially seem to be quite distinct, but in fact have many features in common.



For example, consider two websites - one a cancer charity (e.g. macmillan.org.uk) and one a retailer (e.g. bhs.co.uk). You may think that they are so distinct that each requires quite a different solution in terms of Governance.

However, when examined more closely we find that they are both large in Size, they generate a lot of online Activity and use highly Complex technology.



In a sense, it does not matter that these sites have different content and audiences, they are so similar in Size, Activity & Complexity that they deal with essentially the same basic Governance problem.

In fact, there are enough similarities between sites of the same Scale to allow us sketch out Governance solutions that work across the board, including core skills, numbers of staff, team structures, etc.

Read more on my new article Planning Governance? Start with Website Scale!