Presentation at Netroots Nation, Las Vegas, NV, July 22, 2010

1. Surviving the Website Redesign Process perspectives of an accidental techie Paula Brantner Executive Director, Workplace Fairness

2. Paula’s Background Employment lawyer, not trained in technology Started building Workplace Fairness website in 2001, before many current tools available Survived two major redesigns: 2004-05 to build custom CMS to manage content 2008-09 to improve design, make more user friendly Learned what I needed at conferences & trainings like this one.

3. It turned out all right… www.workplacefairness.org: (website) two-time Webby nominee (2007 for Best Employment Site; 2009 for Best Law Site) PC Magazine’s Top 100 Sites You Can’t Live Without 500,000 unique visitors per year www.todaysworkplace.org: (blog) One of the very first nonprofit org blogs (Jan 2003) Forbes.com Best of the Web Career Blogs

4. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 1. You don’t need a huge budget or a big-name web firm. Never spent over $25,000 a year, even when redesigning Don’t have dedicated in-house staff, never had more than 4 staff members total You probably haven’t heard of my web firm (Midwest New Media, based in Cincinnati…although you should have!)

5. Important Lessons I’ve Learned You do need to know WHY you’re redesigning your site. What is the most important thing you want to accomplish? What is the most significant failure/deficiency of your current site? Who will be happiest when your redesign is complete?

6. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 3. This must be the most important project for someone: make it someone’s priority. Program Staff: Web project probably isn’t as important as the substance of your work. Communications: Trying to integrate web work with other organizational communications. In-House Web Staff: Working on daily content and strategy, hard to focus on long-term project Outside Consultants: Juggling w/ other clients

7. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 3. This must be the most important project for someone: make it someone’s priority. (continued) Program Staff: make it be part of deliverables Communications: offload some other tasks to someone else, outside consultant In-House Web Staff: Block out time; interns to do some routine tasks Outside Consultants: financial incentives for meeting deadlines

8. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 3. This must be the most important project for someone: make it someone’s priority. (continued) Person in charge: project manager (whether it’s in the job description or not) Problem-solver Decision-maker Stakeholder herder Consensus-builder Deadline dominatrix

9. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 4. You MUST know your audience better than anyone else. Your site probably has multiple audiences, but who is the most important one? Who is it today? Who isn’t there, despite your best efforts? How might it change in the next 3-5 years? Don’t let web firm guide this: you must do the work to find out if you don’t already know: surveys, user testing, analytics.

10. Important Lessons I’ve Learned Rolling your own is fine, but do you really need to? I’m a bad example: custom-built content management system (CMS) back-end customer relationship management (CRM). Why? started building our own when we couldn’t afford what was out there; web developer builds exactly what we need

11. Important Lessons I’ve Learned Rolling your own is fine, but do you really need to? (continued) I’m a good example: WordPress (formerly blogger) for the blog Democracy in Action for e-newsletter signup, advocacy tools. Why? I knew there were tools that were more than adequate for us, wouldn’t allow my developer to tinker.

12. Important Lessons I’ve Learned Content is king. And queen. And the whole frakkin’ royal court. Know your audience, know what they’re there to read. What can people find at your site that they cannot find anywhere else? What do people expect to find at your site that’s not currently there? Your audience probably doesn’t have your expertise Keep things jargon-free, industry-speak free, acronym-free (my site: problem is legalese – what’s yours?) Use friends who know nothing about topic for feedback

13. Important Lessons I’ve Learned Content is king. And queen. And the whole frakkin’ royal court. (continued) Write and display your content for an internet audience. No PDFs. Information architecture help if you have anything beyond a basic brochure site. Make content searchable. Accessibility guidelines: no excuse for lack of accessibility : moral if not legal imperative, will help with SEO, mobile use, etc.

14. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 7. Having the latest bells and whistles isn’t the most important thing Simplicity and usability are highly underrated. Everything you add should have a function: Is it important enough to be part of your navigation menu? The fewer choices the better If you add Facebook and Twitter buttons, is there a staff member who will actually use Facebook and tweet on your organization’s behalf? Same with a blog: whose job is it to blog regularly? Everyone who’s done sites for a while has made a Flash mistake: what is the next big no-no? Midwestern cool

15. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 8. Trust your instincts: don’t let lack of expertise derail confidence in your own judgment If you know your audience, have done content homework, and ensured everything has a purpose, then you’re an expert on your site’s audience. Don’t pay by the hour, design process so that you must be satisfied every step of the way without taking financial hit. Ask for multiple drafts, regular check-ins in at multiple stages so you can troubleshoot before entire project derailed. Don’t fear saying no or starting over if you have to.

16. Important Lessons I’ve Learned 9. Document, document, document If you left your job today, would someone else be able to complete the project? If you changed web firms for your next redesign, how would they keep from reinventing the wheel? Internet history is ephemeral: are you doing screen captures, saving documentation of each iteration of your site?

17. Important Lessons I’ve Learned Redesign every day. What dynamic content should be part of your site? Build in last-changed date for every page: incentive to regularly review Redesign process should include post-project testing, analytics, review timeline What mini, low-cost project can you do in the next six months? A website is never, ever done! Nature of the beast. Change your copyright date – obvious, yet oft neglected.