NetPotential

Building your web team

Veronica — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:30:34 +0000

So you’re in charge of the website. You’re likely in Communications and/or Marketing. You’ve reached capacity with your current web team. Perhaps you’ve mainly relied on one or two people to publish most of your content. In fact, you and your staff may have created or edited most of the content so far. You wish you could get more communications people and others to publish some of their work, but no one has time to deal with the peculiarities of your content management system (CMS), so it keeps getting funneled through your web guy (or girl). He has learned to deal with the eccentricities of your CMS – he’s figured out some work-arounds and perhaps entrenched a few or more bad habits into the system. You tend to think of him and his backup as your Web team. Oh, yes, and there is the website host or developer who helps out now and then and your communications people who coordinate updates with the rest of the organization.

And of course, as the Web manager, you’ve learned more than you really wanted to know along the way, but you’ve kept things going pretty well, given what you have to work with. But there are days, when you know that what you really need to get things cooking is a bigger Web team and a better system.

Well, no matter how big or small your site is, your team needs to cover off a number of specific roles when it comes to designing and developing aspects of your existing public site or intranet, or some new web project. You may not have many team members, but among them all, someone better be covering the functions designated to these roles, or something’s going to go missing in action (if it hasn’t already).

With small web project teams, one person may cover many roles to a greater or lesser degree, with more or less competence. The team is usually composed of people on the inside, and some external help. In broad terms there’s the Design team, Technical team, and Content and Marketing team, and someone to manage them all. There’s also a sponsor or a web committee with a high level vision. The diagram above shows you the key roles. Can you identify who covers each of these roles on your team?

If you’re past the implementation phase, then there is less need for some of the technical roles, but if you’re preparing for implementation then you need to make sure all these roles are covered.

To receive a PDF which defines each of the Web Team Roles, please contact us.

Leading a website redesign

Veronica — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:19:29 +0000

There are lots of reasons to contemplate a website “redesign.” It’s dated. It’s drab. It’s dense, confusing, and overgrown. It’s hard to maintain. Or, we’re rebranding, revamping, rethinking…

The fact is, that a “redesign” is rarely just a re-skinning of the look and feel of the site. It often incorporates navigation changes, a new content management system, integration of social media and new functionality for starters. Then there’s the whole business of content migration and creation.

No matter the reasons, the “redesign” will often involve redevelopment or a rebuild. That’s a tall order, so take the time to plan it right.

It should be user centric – based on what your key users want to accomplish when they come to your site. It’s your business to know what that is. And, if you listen, they’ll tell you.

There are many ways to collect user feedback. Hopefully, you’ve been gathering it all along and channeling it to those whose job it is to care.

To find out how they are really using it to accomplish specific tasks, turn to usability testing. That will tell you and your design and development team what really works and what doesn’t. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Learn from what works, not only from what doesn’t work.

“Practical and functional websites rarely win prizes for design but they do win sales and make profits.” ~ Gerry McGovern

If you don’t have much user data, and you don’t want to spend money on testing something that you want to scrap entirely, consider getting an expert (heuristic) review. You’ll learn a lot about best practices and how you can do better in the next generation site.

Once you are into the design phase, avoid design by committee. Everyone has different tastes, and different ideas of what is hot and what is not. Your design should be driven by your strategy, your brand, and best practices in web design.

“People are on the Web not to enjoy your Web design, but to get something done.” ~ Jakob Nielsen

It’s amazing how much time it can take before a design is finalized. Be careful not to underestimate the time needed for design reviews and revisions. Some changes are easy to make down the road when your design has been rendered into code, like font choices and colours. Other changes will cost you development time and fees.

Like renovating your house, some changes are cosmetic and others are structural. How it’s going to be used should drive the design.

Rethinking your website

Veronica — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:03:42 +0000

Let’s suppose you’ve been getting complaints on your website from frustrated users. Or you’re getting it from front line staff and managers who are using the site and they’re hearing from confused customers, members, or donors. And, your people who are publishing web content are feeling the pain of using a clunky system.

You know it’s high time to upgrade or replace your content management system and, while you’re at it, redesign the site to make it work better for all concerned. But, it’s daunting! It’s more than just a redesign. You figure it will probably be expensive and it’s a monumental task. You have so many questions it’s hard to know where to start.Whether it’s been your baby over the years or you’ve inherited it, there is key information you should gather as you prepare to tackle the beast that it’s become:

Pull some web stats reports going back a year or two to identify which pages are most used and least used and the search terms used most (at the very least).
Gather available user feedback (e.g. survey, emails, and comments from those tasked with supporting your users)
Determine how large your site is, how many html pages, pdfs, image files, and other content types exist on it
Find out what your web publishing team dislikes and likes about the existing CMS.
Gather key website planning documents that were used to build the existing site or were created since you launched.

Whether it’s outdated website design and functionality that’s driving the change or an outdated CMS that’s hampering your efforts to manage the site, you’ll need to identify your objectives, what works, what doesn’t work and what would make it easier and better for your external and internal users. Knowing this will help inform your planning phase and determine what else needs to be identified.