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Are we making a difference?

by Michael Vedders on April 20, 2012 in Web Content, Web Design, Web Development, Web Services with No comments

To be honest, the last few weeks I’ve started wondering if what we do on Bethel’s website really makes a difference. I’ve participated in a series of meetings with people questioning our solutions, we’re still migrating content to our new site, and the Web Services team seems to be drowning under a wave of tasks and projects. We leave each day with more to do than time will allow us to accomplish.

So how do you know if you’re making a difference? As I thought about this question, it occurred to me that many of us probably measure our impact in the wrong way.

False measurement

Making everyone happy: The tendency is to think that if you’ve made everyone happy then you’ve made a difference, but often the opposite is actually true. People don’t like change. If you make everyone happy, odds are good you haven’t changed enough.
Doing things fast: We live in a culture of instant gratification and we’re people who expect instant results. But things that are good don’t happen quickly and things that happen quickly often aren’t good. Make sure you don’t get tricked into thinking the rate of production is more important than the product itself.
Getting noticed: It’s nice to be noticed, but I learned from my time in IT that sometimes success means you’re invisible. When people don’t have to think to use your website, people don’t notice you. When your systems don’t crash, people don’t notice. Some of the things with the greatest impact go unnoticed.

True measurement

Audience driven solutions: Do you care more about the people using your tools than the tools or solutions themselves? Do you have regular contact with your audience? Are you asking them what they need? If so, you can’t help but make a difference.
Setting goals and measuring progress: Research says there’s no better motivating factor for people than a clear and obtainable goal. Make sure you have them and celebrate when they’re met.
Taking risks: Often things that make the most difference are risky. Don’t be scared to try things and fail. We work on the web and creating great websites is a process. That means our work is never complete. If your team is taking risks, you’re most likely making a difference.

With those things in mind, I leave this week reminding myself of what matters and how, in a small way, it’s possible to make a big difference.

Whose Race is It?

by Michael Vedders on March 23, 2012 in Web Content, Web Services with No comments

THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE

Tortoise and Hare As a child I remember hearing Aesop’s Fables told to me. These stories were used to teach me morals and lessons I could take with me later in life. One of the tales I remember best was that of The Tortoise and The Hare. The story showed me that slow and steady wins the race. It’s a mantra many people say, but few actually believe.

REAL LIFE FABLES

For just over a year now I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to migrate our content (slow and steady or quick and dirty). Before the launch of our new website we set forth a goal of only migrating content that had been re-written, search engine optimized and pruned. Most of our content (49,000 pages worth) was outdated, inaccurate, and unmaintained. We didn’t want to just place a new design on top of old content. The result of our efforts is fewer, cleaner, more findable pages. But the question needs to be asked: are we doing the right thing?
Are we better off moving slowly and steadily, being intentional about the content we put on the new site to ensure that it’s accurate, up-to-date, and useful for our visitors? Or should we shift our focus to getting all offices and departments into the new site, and worry about fixing the content later?

So what would you do? And would you answer the same way if you were the one waiting for your content to me be moved?

A Year After Launch

by Michael Vedders on August 2, 2011 in Web Development, Web Services with No comments

How are we doing?

So we’re just over a year from the launch of our site and we’ve been measuring our progress fairly closely.

It’s been a long year trying to rewrite a majority of our content. For anyone who has done this before you know it’s simply hard. I often get the question why can’t we just copy content from our old site to our new one? In fact, if I’m honest, I’ve asked myself that same question.

That’s why its important to have a way of measuring your efforts–a way of evaluating the impact that your work is making on your website audience.

In our case this is what keeps me going, through the difficult process. After a year of plowing forward–some days in miles but most days in inches–our site visits are up, our pageviews are up, and virtually every other key indicator points toward success.

Visits: + 58.85%
Pageviews: + 92.38%
Pages/Visit: + 21.11%
Bounce Rate: – 26.69%
Average Time on Site: + 51.30%

What does all this mean? It means that the team and all community members who have contributed have done an exceptional job at reworking our content. A year ago we didn’t show up on the first page of search results for the term “christian university” and today we are #2, just below Colorado Christian, who has the search term in their name.

All these things a indicators that we are headed in the right direction, even if the going at times feels slow. It shows that it’s worth it to put hard work into the words on your webpages, to think about the visors who will be using them, and to make sure all that we do is sustainable for the long haul.

Community Meetings

by Michael Vedders on November 17, 2009 in Announcements, Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

The past two days we’ve held sessions to present the process of the website redesign. At the start of the redesign we had two internal goals. First, ensure the redesign was a process, not a one-time project. Second, involve the community along the way.

During the meetings we unpacked five parts of the process that have brought us to where we are:

Partner

We knew from the start one of the biggest decisions would be to select the right partner. Several nationally recognized firms sent us proposals, and we brought three firm on campus to present their proposals in person. From these presentations mStoner stood out from the rest. The team we’re working from their firm has proven to be a valuable partner.

Strategy

Strategy included three key parts: stakeholder intake, competitor analysis, and testing. We spoke into how each of these three areas informed both the scope of the project and the design of each concept.

Concepts

Based off the information collected in the strategy phase, three separate concepts were created by three different designers—each taking a different look at a potential Bethel website. During the meetings, we walked through each of these concepts to dig a bit deeper into the process that went into their development.

Feedback

Lastly, we presented results from the survey that was released to four main groups: prospective students, current students, faculty/staff, and alumni/parents. Based on the feedback from each of these groups, the steering committee selected concept two as the new face to Bethel’s website.

There were a lot of great questions and comments discussed during the meetings. If you were unable to attend, scan through some of our past posts for information about where we’ve been. If you have additional comments or questions, feel free to send me an email (vedmic@bethel.edu).

Widgets and Gizmos

by Michael Vedders on June 15, 2009 in Announcements, Web Development, Web Services with No comments

One of the things I enjoy about my job as the director of web technology is getting to dream up solutions to peoples problems. Occasionally we get to implement some of those solutions for our team.

Last week we launched two new widgets. The first, a visual timeline that displays our progress throughout the redesign. The second is an email subscription to our blog that delivers blog posts directly to your email. Check them out and let us know if they are helpful by commenting on this post.

State of the Web Union

by Michael Vedders on June 8, 2009 in Announcements, Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

In an attempt to communicate the status of the web redesign project, we wanted to spend some time recapping where we’ve been and where we are headed.

Where we’ve come from

The past month has been very busy for our team. On top of managing the day to day tasks that come our way we’ve also worked on several redesign projects. The past month and a half looked something like this:

4/14 – 4/16 Onsite stakeholder interviews
4/28 Intake with steering committee
5/7 – 5/8 Wireframing with mStoner in Chicago
5/15 Wishlist meeting with CAS admissions and academic departments
5/17- 5/20 Strategy document work
5/20 Wishlist meeting with SEM admissions and academic departments
5/21 Intake with Web Services and presentation of strategy document to the presidents strategy team
5/28 Wishlist meeting with CAPS/GS admissions
6/3 Worked with the library on possible internal and external templates

Where we are headed

We have a lot of things to do. In the weeks to come we will be focused on:

6/8 – 6/15 Creating a collective wishlist
6/10 Launching new technical infrastructure
6/8 – 6/23 Working on the internal architecture of the new site
6/23 -6/24 Onsite user testing with mStoner
6/30 Second draft of the strategy document prepped for presentation

The Papernet

by Michael Vedders on May 20, 2009 in Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

mStoner introduced us to a new way of looking at the web. Its something collectively defined as the "papernet." During our trip to Chicago we took part in a several hour cut and paste session, ultimately resulting in 10 good site templates. Our goal, to come up with the raw elements of each template while avoiding design.

Papernet Gallery

What’s the right equation?

by Michael Vedders on May 13, 2009 in Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

40 cups of coffee + 5 guys + 2 days and 1 gigantic whiteboard = a good start to a strategy document

Mark and I took off at 4:00 a.m. on last Thursday morning to meet the
mStoner crew in Chicago. Our object was to sus out details related to
the web strategy document. We outlined global, topical, and audience
based navigation. We worked on putting together 10 of our 12 page
templates, we talked about content, looked at information architecture
and survived one crazy cab ride back to the airport.

All in all it was a great trip.

Off to the Windy City

by Michael Vedders on May 5, 2009 in Announcements, Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

Mark and I will be heading off to Chicago this week to work with mStoner on the outline document that was created after the stakeholder interview sessions.

Our object is to:

define high level site structure
discuss messaging
create a preliminary features list
and wireframe potential solutions

Once this is done we will be heading back to campus to continue stakeholder feedback and further flesh out the strategy with both the Web Services team and the University.

Is Silva Dead?

by Michael Vedders on April 30, 2009 in Announcements, Web Development, Web Redesign, Web Services with No comments

Many of you have inquired about our content management system, called Silva, asking if we’ll be getting a new one during the redesign. For some of you, the prospect of a new system is exciting. For others, the prospect is terrifying.

In light of that, Web Services is working to create a win-win for both groups. We won’t be getting rid of Silva during this redesign. However, we’ll be making some drastic improvements—starting with a upgrade sometime this summer that will fix and improve a number of baseline features.

Later this year, we’ll roll out larger changes to the core of Silva. Please check back for announcements about these upcoming changes. I think you’ll find that in the end we’ll have a much improved content management system.

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Are we making a difference?