Iterative Website Redesign - Micro Goals in Action

Iterative Web Redesign Nick DeNardis @nickdenardis #psuweb11

Who am I?Associate Director of Web CommunicationsWayne State Universityhttp://wayne.edu/Host of EDU Checkuphttp://educheckup.com/Writer for .eduGuruhttp://doteduguru.com/Curator of EDU Snippitshttp://edusnippits.com/

Why am I here? To sympathize

Why are you here? Let’s make the Web a better place

Agenda• Reality of a website• Why redesigns fail• A better alternative• Examples• Tools• Your turn

Websites are not “projects” completion dates don’t exist

Your website is a business

If you oversee one site You have no excuse

Web departments Just do your best

Your site is launched Now what?

Wait 2 years, repeat. Forming the committee now...

Or.. Start making changes in 2 weeks?While the committee is still busy announcing the launch

Micro Redesigns Deﬁnition:Taking small deliberate steps to reach a larger goal (which may be not 100% apparent at the time).

CraftsmanshipYour staff didn’t spend four years and $50,000 to do Kinko’s work

Some Examples

Wayne State StoriesGoal: Increase story click-throughs

A measly 0.009 %of ~820,000 visitors per month= less than 100 click-throughs

• Drop the drawer down then up• Remove categories• Remove branding images

• Pros –Story displayed without the visitor clicking –Auto rotate if visitor is on page too long• Cons –Takes up additional height –Weird spacing in the menu –Hard to ﬁnd images that wide

• Pros –Stories are front and center –Only some additional height needed –Easier to ﬁnd images to ﬁt –Auto rotate if visitor is on page too long• Cons –Less space for story headlines

New CTR: 0.8 %Now ~6,500 click-throughs per month 6400 % improvement

Let’s start the redesign process!

“When do we get tosee what it looks like?”

“Let’s start looking at websites we like”

“The tabs are going to be at the top right?”

Business objectives In the web world

1. Offer something of value

2. Treat every visitors as your last

3.Your customer is always right Your visitor on the other hand, isn’t.

Deﬁne the businessobjective of your site

To generate requests for more informationTo encourage people to visit campusTo reﬂect positively on XYZ university andincrease it’s reputationThe increase the proﬁle of XYZ and it’s faculty,students and alumni

Start now.Go ahead, yell one out.

How are you measuring? Go ahead, yell it out.

What did we learn?

Pick one objective and measure it

Start at the end

Privacy• Privacy policy is a must• Tracking via GA must be in it• Tracking via cookies can be disabled• Don’t know what third parties are doing

Tools of the trade• Google Analytics http://google.com/analytics• Google Website Optimizer http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer• Crazy Egg http://crazyegg.com• Click Tale http://clicktale.com• Woopra http://woopra.com• Websort http://websort.net/

CrazyEgg

Woopra

Websort

Google Analytics

Google Website Optimizer

Click Tale

Pick a timelineTwo weeks, One Month, One Semester, One Year

Take screenshots Way back machine isn’t reliable

One thing at a time

Faculty listing College of Education

Apply NowHomepage call to action http://j.mp/h8pwej

100 days?What type of timeline is that?

The side effect “Giving” link

Setting up a test Visiting campus

Where can you start?

• Identify a small problem• Figure out a way to track it• Propose changes• Talk about it with some end users• Implement the most appropriate one• Review the results• Document and share

Documenting

Thank you! @nickdenardishttp://www.slideshare.net/nickdenardis

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Iterative Website Redesign - Micro Goals in Action

by Nick DeNardis on Jun 14, 2011

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Iterative Website Redesign - Micro Goals in Action — Presentation Transcript