Campus Web Redesigns

Presentation by Susan Evans, College of William and Mary

3:21 – What are you goals for the web redesign? Well sometimes you just need to regenerate the usability and information you have on your current site.

3:23 – Transparent communication is important. Stop doing so much work trying to contain information! Be open about the process.

3:24 – 7 Big Steps of redesign. First is Discovery. An assesment of your website. Evaluate the current publications. Clarify your goals and objectives. Review challenges, budgets, and staffing concerns. (Get the big picture) What is your school all about?

3:30 – Step 2: Strategy Developement. Prioritize audiences. Formulate information architecture. Outline creative recommendations, messaging ideas. Sort through policies and procedures. Plan to make it scale. Let your departments know what the purpose of the website is.

3:35 – Step 3: Content Creation. Figure out what exists and what needs to be recreated. Who produces it and who reviews it. Have depts create their own stuff. They’re the ones that know that content best. Just make sure you have someone else review it. Also make sure you settle on a key message.

3:39 – Great idea for content review!! If you have so much content to review, why not have many people review it for you? (anywhere from 30 to 40 people review it.) Have people review dept sites that are not their own.

3:45 – Step 4: Design and Testing. Create a spectrum of design concepts. Survey designs with target audience. Build an entire template suite. Test chosen concept with real users. When you do a focus group, why not have your subjects WRITE down their initial reaction and THEN ask questions. Group mentality will prevent people from saying what they want. When they’re asked to write something down though, they’re more likely to be truthful.

3:56 – Step 5: Tech Specifications. Create a short list of CMS options. Identify/select CMS. Develop functional specifications based on designs. Code. Make sure you can deliver what you say you can provide. If you tell departments they’re going to have a great content management tool, make sure you get them one!

4:00 – Step 6: Implementation + Launch. Test it with lots of people! Also make sure you test functionality in lots of different browers. (including mobile in my opinion) Configure users, roles, workflows. Tie-in additional systems.

4:02 – Have webteam edit top level content, but don’t be afraid to let departments edit their own stuff. Like it’s been said before… depts. know their own content BEST!

4:04 – During the implementation process of the website redesign you need to STOP your day job! This is the BUSY part of it all. Also, when you get to this part of it, just stop communicating. If you don’t, people will still think they have the ability to change things. Not true. You should be so far along at this point that you’re not really open to sweeping changes!

4:09 – Most important thing to remember during website redesign? You can’t please everyone.