Last September, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column on how to survive a website redesign for the December 2006 issue of University Business: “10 Tips to a Successful Website Redesign.â€
Ben Riseling, Web Operations Manager at Duke University‘s Office of News and Communications shared these 5 tips at this time.
Discovery process is essential
Make sure you get enough information to answer who your target audiences are and what their browsing behavior is so you can develop an effective communications/marketing strategy. Don’t even think about technical constraints at this point and don’t be afraid to plan for needs a year or two in the future.
Get sign-off from the boss
One of the outcomes of your discovery process should be an information architecture document with decisions on what your navigation buttons should be. Getting your provost, president or chancellor to sign off on your strategy and especially the navigation helps you traverse turf wars that crop up throughout the redesign process.
Real transparency is key
The most repeated questions we got were “Was (insert audience group here) consulted?” We spent a lot of time meeting individually with constituents from multiple departments, schools and audience groups. You should, too. Surveys off your current home page, focus groups, public forums, usability testing of coded designs in process and any other ways you can include the users of your site in the process will make you more informed and also help you keep design and build phases on schedule. And create a blog for continued feedback throughout your entire process.
Get a CMS
Make sure it meets your communication needs and is technically supportable but getting a site on a good CMS makes it easier to maintain and also enables it to seamlessly syndicate content. Whether with RSS, Atom or podcasts people want to be able to consume content in multiple formats. A good CMS can provide those options.
Measure your success
Get some kind of web stats tool. Make sure you get one with flexible reporting capabilities that meet both your IT and communications/marketing needs. Two to three years from now, when you start this process all over again, you’ll be glad you have these data.