Fire the Web Committee
by
Michael Reynolds
Copyright 2011 Michael Reynolds,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0261-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Introduction
If you are a marketing director, communications professional, or someone in a similar position who has had the pleasure of overseeing a web project, this book is for you.
In the grand scheme of things, overseeing a website project is not the most riveting thing you could be doing with your time. Most of the time, our jobs are focused on the runway-level tasks that keep an organization running smoothly, like creating content, distributing, campaigns, and analyzing data. Oh, and don’t forget meetings. Attending lots a lots of meetings is most likely a big component of your day, so maybe a web project is more interesting.
In any case, it can sometimes be difficult to make the time to properly plan and execute a project like implementing a new web presence, which can take months of planning and execution. This is why so many web projects end in frustration. Though I’m sure this has never happened to you, you’ve probably had a “friend” who complained of a website project going over budget, past deadlines, and generally being a nuisance of a project. Why does this happen?
There are a lot of moving parts to creating a new online presence so it’s difficult to point to one magic answer that defines where things usually go wrong. Sometimes it’s lack of market research. Other times it’s lack of understanding of how to choose the right Content Management System. Other times it’s lack of content planning. Ok, most of the time it’s lack of content planning.
A web presence combines a lots of complex puzzle pieces, including branding, design, programming, user interface decisions, work flow planning, marketing strategy, security, social media policy, and copy writing. Your website is the hub of your online presence and must work in harmony with your social media presence, which typically act as pods of engagement and lead-generation tools. Every piece of online content strengthens or weakens your brand and must be nurtured accordingly.
The good news is that there is a process for making it all work and that’s what we will be discussing.
We will cover all the components of your project from start to finish, including market research, choosing a web services firm, choosing a CMS, planning your content, website architecture, design, build out process, launch, and setting up an Internet marketing system.
A word of warning: if you are a do-it-your-selfer and you like tinkering with servers and reading books about JavaScript, stop reading this right now and go find something from O’Reilly Media. This book is not for you.
However, if you are a marketing or communications professional and you are in charge of overseeing a project to redesign your organization’s website and put in place an Internet marketing system, this book is for you. We will assume that you have a budget to hire a professional firm, you have the time to oversee the project, and that you have no interest in writing code. If this sounds like you, then you may be in the right place.
The goal of this short book is to give you the knowledge and guidance you need to successfully oversee a website project, set an Internet marketing system in place, and successfully manage your online presence. Hopefully you will even enjoy it!
Oh yeah, and I want you to get this done without a committee.
1. Market Research
“A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee.” -Author Unknown
Redesigning your website can be a great way to realign your branding, expand your online presence with new functionality, and enhance communication with your constituents. A common step in the process for many organizations is to survey their audiences to get feedback on what to change and how to plan accordingly. But what should you ask?
Before any work is done and before you even choose a website design firm to work with, you need to know who your constituents are and what they want. Who is your customer? What do they (figuratively) look like? What are their habits?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, it may be worth putting your website project on pause for a bit and taking some time to define these targets. When you know who your customer is, it then becomes easier to figure out what they want. Keep in mind that non-profits have customers, too. They usually go by names like “donors”, “grant recipients”, and “members”.
Once you know who your customers are, consider surveying them to get a sense of what their needs are and how to serve them.
The following are some questions that may give you useful insight into how your constituents interact with your online presence.
"What is the primary reason you visit the organization's website?" By leaving this question broad and open-ended, you are more likely to get truthful answers on why people actually visit your website. This will help you understand the objectives of your audience without bias.
"What type of content (if any) from the organization's website do you share the most on social networks?" This will tell you what people really find valuable. If people are consistently sharing content from your blog, for example, this tells you that you have a high-value blog that is working for you. If you find that most people don't share any content, then you may need to work on providing higher-value content. When people find something valuable, they naturally want to share it with others.
"What is the number one thing you wish you could do on the organization's website that you cannot do today?" This will uncover frustrations that people might have as they use your website. Maybe they wish they could make payments or donations online. Maybe they wish they could post comments about content on the site and engage in a conversation. Maybe they wish they could find out more about your board members and communicate with them directly.
"If we added one thing to our website, what should it be?" This is a very open-ended but blunt question that should encourage your constituents to really drill down to the one thing that they want to see changed.
"How would you like us to communicate with you?" This allows your constituents to give you feedback on how they like to receive information. If most people respond with "email", then you might consider investing more resources into improving your email campaigns. If many of your survey subjects respond with "RSS" or "Facebook", then you may want to create tighter integration with these tools. If you get a lot of responses like "phone", then you may want to start capturing phone numbers more aggressively on your website.
"What is one thing we do that annoys you?" This may seem like a scary question to ask but hopefully you want the truth. For example, if your constituents overwhelmingly respond with "you send me too many emails and give me no way to unsubscribe" then you know what to change. Sometimes the best way to grow and succeed is to stop doing things that annoy your constituents. Keep in mind that even if you get an answer that is not even website-related, this will still tell you something useful.
"What about our website makes you feel good?" This is a nice, open-ended closing question that lets people end on a positive note and gives you feedback on what their emotional response is to your website. People tend to make decisions based on emotion and this will help you understand how your online presence is currently making them feel.
Notice that these questions avoid any kind of specific structural items about website navigation, what should be on the home page, and so forth.