T
his document is meant to help explore the many aspects of a website redesign. The idea is to accurately assess what your site is doing well, what problems need to be solved, what parts of your branding and content strategy could be bolstered and how to bridge the gap between your business requirements and your users’ needs.
Web Governance
W
eb Governance is not only about governing day-to-day decisions, such as who will write the next blog post or who is responsible for fixing broken links. Your Web Governance should also cover who decides how web
content is organized, which criteria needs to be met before you’ll have to develop a new website, and who is responsible for following up on web strategic goals and whether they have the expertise to do it.
˃˃ Project management
˃˃ Tech
˃˃ Content
˃˃ Maintenance post launch
Content Inventory
A
content inventory is a list of all the content on your site. Your inventory will typically include items like text, images, documents, and video. To gain insight from your inventory, you will
˃˃ List all pages, their titles, and navigation title ˃˃ Define purpose of pages
˃˃ Define the target audience for each page ˃˃ Articles ˃˃ Blogs
˃˃ Discussion forum
˃˃ Documents, PDF, forms ˃˃ E-commerce; i.e. ticket sales ˃˃ Email newsletters
˃˃ Design decisions
˃˃ Budget/Timeline
need to assess each piece of content. Doing so will help you understand what is on the site, if it is located properly and if the content should be removed or revised.
˃˃ Event calendar
˃˃ Audio, pod casts
˃˃ Digital content, video, photos etc, what kind and how many, what pages they are on
˃˃ Links, ordered and grouped
˃˃ Event registration
˃˃ Lecture series videos ˃˃ Incoming RSS feeds
˃˃ Outgoing RSS feeds
˃˃ Media; i.e. PDF, how many of each, what pages they are on
˃˃ Social media, feeds and sharing links: Twitter, Facebook, etc.
˃˃ Image gallery
˃˃ Faculty pages
˃˃ Course offerings
˃˃ Directories
˃˃ Donations
˃˃ Research group pages ˃˃ Site map
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Competitive analysis
I
t is crucial to look at your competitors and examine how they are positioned in the marketplace. It enables you
˃˃ Search engine ranking and traffic estimations ˃˃ Which keywords are your competitors ranking for ˃˃ Estimated traffic
˃˃ Search engine friendliness
˃˃ What is the website speed
˃˃ Are your competitors’ sites mobile accessible ˃˃ Social media integration ˃˃ Blog usage
˃˃ Do they have downloads and PDFs, or is that information just on the site
to uncover best practices within the industry and based on those findings make recommendations for your site.
˃˃ Do they use multimedia
˃˃ What conversion points do they have: contact, live chat, email, phone etc
˃˃ Which social networks are your competitors using
˃˃ What reach do they have on the key social networks ˃˃ What content is shared most from your competitors’ sites
˃˃ How many followers/likes ˃˃ Key calls-to-action
˃˃ What are the calls-toactions shown across the site
˃˃ Are your competitors using any unique approaches ˃˃ What is the key unique selling point your competitors’ sites are promoting
˃˃ Do your competitors use different unique selling points for different target markets
˃˃ What call-to-action is on the homepage
Search Engine Optimization
S
EO will allow you to connect with those searching for your product or service and help turn them into customers. SEO isn’t about structuring
˃˃ Number of visits/unique monthly
a website for search engines. SEO is about making content easy to find and organized in logical structure for your audiences.
˃˃ Bounce rate, per month
˃˃ Total number of new leads/ form submissions, per month
˃˃ Top-performing keywords, in terms of rank, traffic
˃˃ Total number of pages that receive traffic
˃˃ Time on site, per month
˃˃ Total number of pages
˃˃ Number of inbound linking domains
˃˃ Pages that receive no traffic ˃˃ Most searched pages
˃˃ Most shared content
˃˃ Most viewed content
˃˃ Highest trafficked pages
˃˃ Inbound links to individual pages ˃˃ Google page speed rating ˃˃ Google mobile usability ranking
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Business objectives
F
ormalize the management objectives and organizational goals of your digital marketing plan. The business
˃˃ Website’s role in marketing plan
˃˃ What should be on some pages
˃˃ What should be on every page
˃˃ Need to drive traffic to key page or pages
˃˃ Website’s role in social media plan
˃˃ Mailing list/ newsletter sign up
objectives combined with the user objectives will define the specific role the website will perform.
˃˃ Need to download specific documents
˃˃ Video views
˃˃ Driving directions ˃˃ Reducing phone calls
˃˃ Career inquiry, future students and employment at UMN
˃˃ Event registrations
New site goals ˃˃ Increasing number of visits/visitors ˃˃ Reducing bounce rate
˃˃ Increasing time on site ˃˃ Improving domain authority
Personas
P
ersonas help to bring richness to otherwise statistical data. Unlike traditional target audience segmentation, they provide greater depth and context to generic target
˃˃ Who are your audiences
˃˃ Create personas for each audience, and refer to it throughout the redesign
Branding guide
B
˃˃ Increase SEO for important keywords
˃˃ What do you like/ dislike about
˃˃ Wish list of services, features
audience groups by focusing on one character who embodies the predominant qualities of the larger group.
process
˃˃ Remember that none of you are your users
˃˃ Define user stories for each
rand guidelines essentially summarize what the brand stands for and also provide guidance on how the brand identity elements such as logo, fonts, color palette should
current site
of your personas, i.e. a prospective student story: I want to apply to the college
be used and communicated. Brand guidelines usually also include guidance to the “tone of voice” you will use to communicate with your website users.
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Branding guide
˃˃ You’ll be given some UMN TC and CSE branded assets which will encapsulate your branding ˃˃ For dept/unit/ center branding, define: site colors, font sizes, alignment, spacing, background colors/images ˃˃ Navigation
˃˃ h1 to h5 tags
˃˃ Paragraphs: line height, leading, space after/before, indentation ˃˃ Fonts
˃˃ Lists styles, i.e. bullets, icon, dash
˃˃ Block quotes: indent size, font size, italics or not, color
˃˃ Use of italics, bold and underlining
˃˃ Links, including active, hover and visited states
˃˃ Icons to use in site ˃˃ Images: sizes, caption style
˃˃ Gallery/slideshow styles
˃˃ Common elements such as sidebars, footer ˃˃ Title, i.e. each word capitalized
˃˃ Date of publication
˃˃ Categorizes for all content ˃˃ Summarization, style, i.e. custom description or article of truncation of article ˃˃ Dates
˃˃ Authors
˃˃ Metadata, titles and descriptions ˃˃ What is going to be in Related content
Section 508 compliance
S
ection 508 is a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which requires that electronic information be accessible to people with disabilities. Most of this will be implemented in the development phase of your project.
˃˃ Your site should be navigable with only the keyboard
˃˃ Forms need to be submittable without the use of a mouse ˃˃ Form fields need to be clearly labeled
˃˃ Include special instructions within field labels
˃˃ Color contrast, fonts especially, should be high
˃˃ Text should be on the larger side ˃˃ Links should be labeled descriptively, not “read more” or “click here”
˃˃ Links need to be underlined, color blind people
You’ll need to define how your team will approach thiss, i.e. how you will label forms, or how you will describe images and maintain consistency. Keep in mind that this list is not comprehensive. cannot see them otherwise.
˃˃ For navigation with more than a couple of links, provide ‘skip navigation’
˃˃ Photographs should contain descriptive text, alt text tag ˃˃ Images should have text
equivalents.
˃˃ Don’t use images to display text
˃˃ All images should contain descriptive alternative text. ˃˃ Complex graphics need to be accompanied by a detailed text description
˃˃ If an image is used as a link, be sure
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Section 508 compliance that the alt tag also describes the link destination
˃˃ Alt tags should be used for the intended purpose, no stuffing SEO keywords into alt tags ˃˃ Videos should contain closed captions
˃˃ If budget permits, add an audio
description or reading of the text, many visitors with disabilities prefer to listen to audio than read, especially if the content is complicated
˃˃ Don’t use image maps and if you do, offer alternative forms of navigation via an external link,
tags must contain the alt attribute
˃˃ Data tables should have the column and row headers appropriately identified, using the tag ˃˃ Tables used strictly for layout purposes
˃˃ Repeatedly flashing images should not be used
Usability
B
oth the design and development process are focused around the prospective user. Make sure your website can meet the users’ goals in an efficient and effective manner.
˃˃ Mobile first
˃˃ Responsive design
˃˃ Ease of use to find key information
˃˃ Things to keep in mind about users’ behavior:
˃˃ Users appreciate quality
˃˃ Users don’t read, they scan ˃˃ Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification
˃˃ Users don’t make optimal choices
U
sability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a website. This step is defined by the research conducted in the previous sections.
˃˃ Research & brainstorming of visual elements
˃˃ Wire-framing ˃˃ Mock-ups
˃˃ Don’t use downloadable PowerPoint, Word or Excel files ˃˃ Copy needs to be semantic i.e. proper use of h1, h2 etc; this also improves SEO
Remember that your team is not your user and assumptions about their behavior is only a guess. Test those guesses early and often.
and credibility
Design
˃˃ PDF documents and other downloaded files should be accessible
˃˃ Don’t make users think ˃˃ Don’t squander users’ patience ˃˃ Strive for simplicity
˃˃ Use web conventions: standard navigation, buttons, layouts
Test the design as many times as possible before the development step. Writing code is expensive, have the design tried and proven before moving to the development phase. ˃˃ Design
˃˃ Development
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Maintenance
M
aintenance and it’s associated cost is often overlooked. Budgeting for a proper maintenance schedule
˃˃ Content responsiblitly
˃˃ Updating assets: pictures, video, etc ˃˃ Link management ˃˃ Events calendar ˃˃ News
˃˃ All pages on the front end of the website are loading without errors ˃˃ Backups are performed daily and stored off site ˃˃ Update Content Management System software and plug-ins
˃˃ Check all forms to ensure they are working properly ˃˃ Review and resolve any issues with emails sent from the web server ˃˃ Check and remove spam comments, form submissions and user accounts
˃˃ Check for any broken links ˃˃ Check for 404 errors and resolve by fixing links or redirecting
˃˃ Marketing: write one blog post and share it with your networks ˃˃ Check website loading speed. If more than 3 seconds then consult with your web developer to
ensures your site will continue to work for you as one of your most powerful communication tools.
improve speed
˃˃ Review security scans and resolve any issues
˃˃ Review website statistics. What is your most popular content? What is your least popular? Where are visitors coming from? What is your best conversion source? ˃˃ Review your local search visibility
˃˃ Marketing: send an update to your email list ˃˃ Review website: what could be improved?
perform regularly? Could these be automated?
˃˃ Test the website to ensure that it looks and displays properly on the most popular browsers and mobile devices ˃˃ Validate your site. (CSS/ HTML, Accessibility, Mobile-friendly)
˃˃ Review and adjust website advertising campaigns ˃˃ Check backup health by restoring the most recent backup to a separate web server
˃˃ ˃˃ Web graphics and photos: are these up to date? Could they be improved to be more current? ˃˃ Check your website content: what is dated and what could be improved? ˃˃ Review and tweak meta title and meta description tags
˃˃ Test and tweak forms and automated messages to improve conversion rates. Ensure this automatically integrates with your CRM and email marketing system
˃˃ Improve automation: What tasks do you have to
Check the uptime logs. If uptime is less than 99.9% then consult with web host. Consider alternative web host if they can’t provide a solution
˃˃ Update the copyright date in your website footer and in any other references ˃˃ Review each page of the site for content accuracy ˃˃ Renew your website domain name(s)
˃˃ Review your website strategy to align with your business goals ˃˃ Consider updating the website design
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UMN Resources Web Development https://it.umn.edu/website-solution-selection-guide https://it.umn.edu/create-websites
Content Management https://it.umn.edu/self-help-guide/content-strategy
Branding https://www.ur.umn.edu/brand/i-want-to/index.php#make-a-website
Sec 508 http://accessibility.umn.edu/home.html https://policy.umn.edu/it/webaccess#procedureslink
Usability
https://it.umn.edu/usability-services
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Example Persona Matthew Johnson bio: 57 years old Married Father of three children Grandfather of one child Has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics.
goals and tasks: He is focused, goal-oriented within a strong leadership role. One of his concerns is maintaining quality across all output of programs.
environment:
On Tues: “Can you get me that staff analysis by Tuesday?”
He is comfortable using a computer and refers to himself as an intermediate Internet user. He is connected via a T1 connection at work and dialup at home. He uses email extensively and uses the web about 1.5 hours during his work day.
spends his work time:
use case: As an alumni, I want tickets to a football game.
use case: As an alumni, I’m interested in attending a symposium that has Professor Furter as a speaker. How do I register?
marketing demographic:
Requesting and reviewing research reports, preparing memos and briefs for agency heads, and supervising staff efforts in food safety and inspection.
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