Organizing 2.0: How to Plan for Your Website Redesign

How to Plan for Your Website Redesign Julie Blitzer & Fureigh Organizing 2.0 Conference Saturday, December 5, 2009

Who are we?
Julie Blitzer
New Projects Coordinator
Advomatic, LLC
Fureigh Web and Online Communications Strategist Fureigh Consulting, Inc.

What are we going to discuss?
Internal planning & research, budgeting
Content Management Systems (CMSes): what, why and how to choose? Open source or not?
Customer/Constituent Relationship Management (CRM)
Writing a good request for proposals (RFP)
Selecting a vendor
What to expect from your vendor

“ We want a new website!”
The Board or Executive Director asks for a new site. Now what??
Answer: Plan, plan, plan!
http://xkcd.com/148/

Planning, Part 1: Logistics
What technology capacity (skill and time) do you have inside your organization?
What is your budget for the project?
What can you get with $1,000, $10,000, $50,000 or $100,000?
How soon do you want your site to launch? (Note: “ASAP” is not the right answer to this question.)

Planning, Part 2: Your Organization
What are your organization’s stated mission and goals?
What is your organization’s character?
What portion of your members are online?
How big is your email list currently?

Planning, Part 3: Target Audiences
Who are you trying to reach?
Potential donors
Current members
Activists
Think about demographics:
Age
Location
Familiarity with technology

Planning, Part 4: Basic Goals
What do you want your site to do?
Nonprofit/Advocacy Websites 1.0
“ Brochure” sites
Bad designs
Nonprofit/Advocacy Websites 2.0
Action tools (e.g., “Write your representative”)
Social media integration
Community functionality

Planning, Part 5: Internal Feedback
Talk to your staff. What do they need? How do they use the site? How would they like to use the site? What would their ideal website provide? Relevant staff members may be in communications, development and political departments.

Planning, Part 6: Information Architecture (IA)
Leave it to the pros: Do IA only if you have internal expertise.
Information Architecture documentation:
User research: Personas, interviews, etc.
Site map
Wireframes
Content inventory
User permissions

Sample Site Map: Advomatic.com

Sample Wireframe: New Leaders Council

Planning, Part 7: CMS & CRM
What’s a CMS?
Why you need a CMS
Open source vs. proprietary (Don’t go custom!)
Popular open source options: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress
http://www.idealware.org/ comparing_os_cms/

Planning, Part 7: CMS & CRM
What’s a CRM?
Sample features
Popular CRMs: CiviCRM, DIA/Salsa, Convio, Kintera, Salesforce

Site Audit, Part 1
Why should you audit your current site if you are going to replace it anyway?
What are the goals? What’s the audience?
What works? (“Name a few things that you love about the website, things that have been working.”)
What doesn’t? (“Name a few things that have been problems.”)
Look at your metrics. Very useful: Heat map of home page in Google Analytics.

Site Audit, Part 2
On your new site, what do you want (functionality, features, design)?
Do you want a rebranding process? Or do you want to stick with the logo and/or colors you have and redo the rest around it?
What do you not have that you want? Why do you want it?
If you have separate sites or blogs, what are your thoughts on keeping them separate or integrating them?
Priority for each of these items?

Writing Your RFP
RFP means “Request for Proposals.” Sometimes also called RFQ, as in “Request for Qualifications.”
Why do you need an RFP?
What you get with a good RFP
More precise estimates
Fewer unanswered questions
No sticker shock when you get your first vendor bill

What makes a good RFP?
Be specific! Include documentation from your internal research, your site audit, and feedback you’ve received
Don’t leave anything out: List budget and time constraints
Include clear feature descriptions

RFP Outline, Part 1
Organizational background : 1–2 paragraphs
Scope of this project : Information architecture? Website redesign? Complete online communications strategy plan? CRM integration? Hosting? Maintenance & ongoing support?

RFP Outline, Part 2
List your goals: Include what you’re planning to achieve and how you'll know it’s been successfully completed.
Specify your target audiences.
Present the results of internal feedback and your site audit.
Identify key features and functionality. This is the most important part of your RFP, so we gave it its own slide...

RFP Outline: Key Features & Functionality
Helpful: "We need a calendar that will appear on one page and can have private events as well as public events, with registration restricted to current members, and that provides reports of event registrations.”
Not as Helpful: "We need a Google Calendar," or "We need a widget from example.com .”
What goes on each page?
Include a rough site map if you can.

RFP Outline, Part 3
Provide a budget framework. Include what you expect that budget to cover. It's reasonable to ask for a line-item budget from prospective vendors in return.
Give your anticipated timeline for deciding on a vendor and, if possible, your desired timeline for creating the site.
List specific requirements for vendors : e.g., expertise with a certain CMS or CRM (if you already have one).

RFP Outline, Part 4
Briefly explain your criteria for evaluating proposals.
Include contract terms, if applicable (ex: government grant restrictions).
Include your contact information so prospective vendors can ask you follow-up questions.
Deadline: By when do you need proposals? Give vendors at least 2 weeks, if not 3 weeks, to prepare proposals.

Selecting a Vendor
Follow-up phone calls or meetings are common practice.
Consider budget AND experience.
Avoid: Developers without experience in your selected CMS/CRM, retainer contracts for a single project, flat rate billing that doesn’t get specific about the services provided.
Be sure to contact references and ask a lot of questions.

Website Creation, Part 1
Vendor creates an internal (i.e., not-yet-public) site. This is more of a process than we’re laying out here.
Client (or a consultant) rewrites content to be web-friendlier, if necessary. This can often happen at the same time.
Client or vendor imports content into the site.

Website Creation, Part 2
Vendor sends client the go-ahead to review the site.
Client reviews the internal site, provides feedback. (Usability testing is an awfully good idea.)
Vendor incorporates feedback.
Client reviews one final time and signs off.
Site goes live!

Thanks! Julie Blitzer http://advomatic.com/julie Twitter: @zhuli Fureigh http://www.fureigh.com @fureigh

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Organizing 2.0: How to Plan for Your Website Redesign

by Julie Blitzer on Dec 07, 2009

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Organizing 2.0: How to Plan for Your Website Redesign — Presentation Transcript