B2B site redesign process
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- flashbender
This is not a very sexy post. sorry.
I have to write a very brief proposal (2-4 pages) detailing the process and timelines for redesigning a 30+ domain 24 country / 12 language family of web sites. The majority of the sites will share templates.
How would you go about this? My initial very thin ideas are: Starting with business needs analysis, current site usage reports, business needs and competitor site studies and content audit to determine the IA and site framework.
Once we have that we'll revise our existing and generate new content as needed concurrently exploring technical options, but I do not see us straying from EpiServer - the current CMS we use.
Once that is all said and done we work with the brand manager to define the look and feel of all necessary templates.
Then bing bang boom - build the templates in the CMS, populate them for each site and then set it all to live.
Also if you want to share any pitfalls - especially SEO pitfalls - that you can think of or have encountered if you have done this that would be great - Regarding losing existing search ranking and such.
Any thought, thanks.
- flashbender0
I hate all of you
- flashbender0
except fot eh london drinks regulars
- flashbender0
and nairn/detritus
- flashbender0
and spooky
- flashbender0
and lvl_13
- flashbender0
and my minneapolis friends who never post
- Gordy220
I had to do this recently and it was horrendous.
What's your timescales? What CMS are you using?
- flashbender0
Timescales are up in the air - basically now trying to figure that out. The actual build time should not be too long, but the planning and figuring out the IA are going to be quite long. The IA and the actual structure of the site - segmenting by business theme, industry sector, country... that is going to be the especially trick bit
We use Episerver for CMS
- Sorry, dumb question: What's IA? Would it be Information Architecture?oktalk
- yep. The 'behind the scenes' organisation of the site
flashbender
- Gordy220
Good luck with that - we ended up rolling out a lighter version for launch and are looking at that kind of thing coming up.
- cannonball19780
I had to do this before. took forever and was boring as fuck. i reccommend holding a gun to your temple at night to feel alive.
- vaxorcist0
Most imporantly, think of this as NOT about the company/companies, but about WHAT THE TARGET MARKET NEEDS in order to become better customers according to your BUSINESS OBJECTIVES....
Ask people who matter what will they consider a success, what will they consider a problem and what will they consider a disaster? Get them to write these things down, with clear concise agreements. Use this to determine little questions rather than continually bugging them for details, they will be less micro-manager-esque once they trust that you get their goals.... and once you establish your knowledge of a target market, you can use this as ammunition to stop random tangents and ego-oriented shit taking over ....
Ask some this OR that questions, establish really clear priorities not just a bunch of "this and that and this other thing" bullshit... once clear priorities are set, architecture almost takes care of itself...
also make sure you have a clear idea of exactly who has to approve what... often a redesign is a time when people who felt left out last time are gunning for influence....
Make a list of low hanging fruit and hit a few very quick so you get some reputation...
- and of course, make damn sure you know WHY they're doing the redesign?!?vaxorcist
- vaxorcist0
SEO things to know....
1. is there ANY way at all you can keep a lot of URLS the same? a bunch of 404's can torpedo your google juice....this can be a big challenge, as it may force you to re-create the mess you currently have... NOTE: check inbound links on google, then make a list of them, read Matt Cutts too...
http://googlewebmastercentral.bl…
http://googlewebmastercentral.bl…2. if you do keep some content, try as hard as possible to not duplicate the same content on multiple pages/urls, as this will cause google to think you're a content-farm-spamdexing site...
3. make sure people know that copy pasted from powerpoint is bad for SEO because it's usually incomplete sentances and not rich enough for google to take seriously, or get inbound links...
4. make sure people know that copy pasted from print brochures is also bad for SEO, because it's usually wordy and not nearly as keyword rich as content written for the web, with concise sentances.
- flashbender0
Hey! Look at that! Some actual useful responses! QBN still has the power to surprise.
The redesign's main goal is to change from a website designed by committee by the business for the business to something that actually speaks to the user/potential customer. Shocking idea. I know.
The two biggest concerns that I have are:
- keeping SEO rank through the redesign so vaxorcist your comments are most appreciated.- figuring out how the best way to present the site areas. Right now it is broken down by: country > Business stream > sector > subject. The prevailing theory right now is to present by theme or topic then country then business stream. We'll do a shit load of customer and business needs analysis to figure out just what the right way to handle this is.
planning/research/analysis is going to take probabally double the actual build time.
Oh how times have changed.
If anyone has any links to process docs, I'll be your friend if you post them.
- vaxorcist0
I'd consider making a few rapid prototypes in various cheap or free wordpress templates, each one trying a certain approach, then testing these with the HUGE CAVEAT that people know "this is only a test, had this been a real website...."
why???? Because people's spoken ideas about websites and their actual use are almost completely different in our testing experience.... I did a lot of this, but it was years ago...
- vaxorcist0
flashbender.... I'm scared about all this customer and business analysis... we took that approach on a project some time ago, it seemed great, lots of meetings, lots of analysis, everyone felt great till the build actually started and ... uh... we found out users had vastly different ways of actually using our stuff than we had planned... even different than what they told us in all those focus groups....
we had it all ass-backwards....
we were building an app-like site, possibly a bit different, but there really, really, needed to be a better approach.... and somebody hired a developer from CA who beat us around a bit and knocked some sense into it all, he was hugely into the "fail early and often" approach, show a bunch of somewhat-working testable prototypes to actual users, learn fast what doesn't work, give them tasks, not just asking for feedback, watch more than listen.... videotape them while they try things....
Our original and bad approach was to think people wanted all sorts of stuff they could specify and tinker with, we ended up with a much more simple system, with a restaurant-menu-like list + a search box.... nobody liked 3 or 4 tier navigation in our experience....
Good luck, and remember the "Mythical Man Month" ... a software engineering book, arguing that project managers may fool themselves into thinking they can hire more people to make a deadline, but late projects are usually made even later by hiring more people because productive people have to explain everything to everyone new instead of working on stuff,... and invisible disagreements are the main reason it's late...
Large projects like this are often like a woman having a baby, it takes 9 months, you cannot simply hire 9 women for 1 month to get a baby...
- flashbender0
vaxorcist - you are a good dude. And I am going to steal your last line and use that in the proposal.
And you are spot on - the biggest part of this is going to be actual user testing and we will be working with a dedicated testing agency to do that. Because yeah, people say one thing, but do another - this is made even more complicated by the sheer number of main user types the site has.
What I'm doing in the mean time is a series of tests based on the current site templates to be used in framing the research plan.
The biggest assumption that has been made is that it will be a positive to go from the current system of 'hey, we sell things what do you want?' to an approach that says 'Oh, hi! You have a problem? We have solutions, come and explore with us'
The first test is designed to prove or disprove that.
Adding to the difficulty of this is that when the content strategy is set getting the marketers to generate the necessary customer based/ benefits focused messaging is going to be an absolute nightmare.
Thanks a lot for your insight, it is most appreciated.
- you might allow more than one path to find things... only one = some people miss it..vaxorcist
- vaxorcist0
Granger did a redesign.... I know somebody who works there....
- vaxorcist0
1. auto-fill search boxes can help a LOT, but may hit a database hard... talk to IT about caching search results.... and put in a checkbox to allow people to turn that feature off, some hate it...
2. extended footers can contain TONS of links without wrecking design
3. drop-down top menubar items that show whole bunch of links (like granger's PRODUCTS button.. this can work for repeat users well, but test it on an iPhone)
- flashbender0
The auto fill search boxes is a great idea. I will definitely have that on the list of things to explore.
Granger is similar to the shop portion of the site for BSI (shop.bsigroup.com). This too will be folded into the redesign. If you can pass my email to your friend or just ask him what some of the major pitfalls they faced. That would be handy. If not, that's cool too.
- Grainger's autofill search box is one of the best I've seen for a site that big....vaxorcist