We’ve just completed a mammoth project to deliver web presences for three new academic schools while putting content strategy to the test.
The pages went live on Monday 1 August to coincide with the official launch of the new Schools. It was a tight schedule with lots of problem solving to do along the way. But we’re super proud of how they’ve turned out. Take a look for yourself:
- School of Arts and Creative Technologies
- School for Business and Society
- School of Physics, Engineering and Technology
Putting content strategy to the test
Like most big web projects, this project was as much about the people as it was about the content. It was about hearts and minds, listening and negotiating, as we helped the newly formed Schools tell the world about who they are.
Content strategy toolkit
To help us navigate this complex project we used lots of content strategy tools to help us while working with over 65 stakeholders.
- Content audit – we started with a thorough understanding of existing content, referring back to this audit throughout the project to help us plan and make decisions
- Stakeholder interviews – colleagues across the Schools gave us many important insights on audiences, user needs, challenges and much more
- Content plans – we worked with each School on a content plan to define and document key messages and content decisions
- Prototypes – we developed prototype layouts with real content – no lorem ipsum in sight!
- Content crit – we got together as a team to review and refine our prototypes
- Project steering group – representatives from schools and departments helped shape the approach and decisions, and disseminated information within their areas
- Content workshops – we held workshops with the Schools to figure out content decisions together
- Content collaboration tools – among the tools used at various stages of the content creation process was Bugherd. It allowed people to comment straight on the pages – generating over 1,700 pieces of really useful feedback!
- Quality assurance – we’re developing processes to ensure quality is maintained and improved over time, and so everyone knows what their role is
Above all, listening to and collaborating with our stakeholders is what helped make this project a success. Although challenging, having a hard deadline meant we couldn’t take our eyes off the goalpost. We aimed for progress, not perfection!
Before and after
What’s next?
Of course the proof of the pudding will be in the data and user feedback. We’ll continue to make tweaks and optimise where we need to iteratively.
So far the data is telling a good story. The new school websites are getting lots of views (more than their constituent departments combined were). At this stage it’s going to be largely because the new pages were widely shared.
We’ll revisit the data in a few weeks so we can see what more ‘normal’ usage looks like. We’ll also look at the impact of content changes on SEO once Google has caught up with indexing all the new pages.
We’ll bring these insights to our own internal debrief where we’ll review and refine the process for the next phase of the project: working with three existing academic departments to redevelop their web presences.
Find out more
- Follow our project page (wiki.york.ac.uk)