Website Redesign Survival Guide for Marketers
•Télécharger en tant que PPTX, PDF•
1 j'aime•583 vues
This document provides advice for marketers undergoing a website redesign, comparing it to an expedition to Antarctica. It recommends marketers pick the right team for the project, choose the right technology and development tools, carefully plan the redesign process, prepare necessary skills and resources, lead the team through challenges, be ready to improvise when issues arise, push through the difficulties of the final stages, and view the ongoing process as an adventure that continues after launch.
Recommandé
Recommandé
Contenu connexe
Plus de Percussion Software
Plus de Percussion Software (20)
Dernier
Dernier (20)
Website Redesign Survival Guide for Marketers
- 1. Website Redesign Survival Guide for Marketers Exploring the Marketer’s Most Treacherous Territory
- 2. How is a website redesign like going to Antarctica?
- 3. How Do You Survive?
- 4. Why are you even doing this?
- 7. Chart your course with care.
- 10. Be the leader your team needs.
- 11. Danger lurks. Be ready to improvise.
- 12. The final leg is often the hardest.
- 14. Let’s review.
- 15. Questions?
Notes de l'éditeur
- A website redesign is like exploring uncharted territory Even if you’ve been through one, you still don’t know exactly where you’re going—if whether everyone will survive But at the end, you know that glory and honor await—or at least some tangible ROI Before we get started, I’d like to just take a quick poll on your experience with website redesigns and whether you have one coming up or recently finished one What’s your website project status? Thinking about one but no definite timeline Thinking about one and have a launch date in mind Have a project in progress and need some guidance Have recently finished a project and looking for a sanity check Website project? I thought we were going to talk about penguins!
- Full disclosure: I’ve been reading a lot about polar exploration at the start of the 20th century lately, and it’s both inspiring and terrifying. You have a small group of people facing insurmountable odds and many unknowable obstacles, changing conditions that throw them off course and put their lives in danger, and strain their courage and resources. And that’s actually a lot like any big project. Exploring uncharted, treacherous territory in search of magnificent achievement? I thought it was a pretty good parallel. There’s a lot of unknowns that you can’t anticipate and whatever your plan is, you can trust things will not go exactly according to that plan You’re going to work very closely with people, some of whom might behave unpredictably when danger arises No matter how many redesigns you’ve been through before, or how many highly informative webinars you’ve attended—the final destination is ultimately a mystery, but we can rely on a lot of knowledge from prior expeditions to get us safely where we are going.
- When survival is at stake, it’s critical that you stack the odds in your favor This means having the right people on your team, planning and preparing, and of course, picking up some survival skills along the way. You hope for the best, but should prepare for the worst because even if you’re managing the project, sometimes it might feel like the project is managing you Today we’re going to talk about selecting the best team for your expeditions, what you need to bring with you, and how to ensure you get where you’re going while avoiding the most common dangers of a major website project Resources People Skills Preparation Perseverence
- You’re probably not doing this for the glory of the British empire—or the Kingdom of Norway But you should have a reason behind embarking on this journey beyond just thinking you need a new website… Why? Because your reasons will help define your goals and success metrics. How can you tell if you’ve arrived if you don’t know where you’re going? Some of the most common reasons we see for redesigns Outdated technology Bad branding Poor results/no measurable ROI Weak content marketing Outdated technology – it’s 2015 and you don’t have a responsive design yet, anything on your website to help mobile visitors—that’s a problem --- or if you don’t have a CMS and are still uploading static pages to a server to update the site, you’re in serious trouble because you’ll never be able to scale up your digital marketing operation Bad branding? If your website is inconsistent, or you have a group of disjointed websites that all look different, or your recent branding doesn’t extend itself to your online presence, you’re hurting your brand and how you’re perceived—another impetus for the redesign could be that you look good, but exactly like your competition, and you need to stand out Poor results – your website is like an employee that should be working for you. If you’re paying someone to come into the office every day, sit at their desk, and do absolutely nothing, or worse, interfere with other people’s work, you probably shouldn’t employ that person much longer. If your website is not actually driving measurable business outcomes, it’s probably a candidate for a redesign. – conversions, traffic, etc Lastly, you don’t think of a website redesign of something that has to do with content marketing, but a website isn’t just about how it looks—it’s about how easy it is to get new content to your audience, how easy it is to find your content through good SEO, and how well you can engage visitors. It’s aesthetics and design, but it’s also usability, information architecture, and whether at the end of the day visitors – and potential customers – find it helpful and informative
- This is probably where the first points of contention arise---assembling your rag tag team of adventurers. Everyone wants to feel ownership of the new website, and chances are more than once person wants to be in charge, but there can be only one captain. If leadership is not clearly delineated and respected, that could spell mutiny and disaster. Whether you have an agency to do the design or implementation, or your internal creative team is doing the project, recognize that a lot of people have a personal stake in the outcome of your expedition. They all want it to succeed, even if they don’t get a seat on board. Generally, the bigger a team or group of people in a meeting, the less productive discussions become. It’s a balancing act of representing all stakeholders, but keeping the core team small. The people who are ultimately responsible for the success of the site—probably the marketing team—will play a key role, but you want to make sure that your executives, your product team, your sales and customer support teams are all represented in the initial stages. Designate a sole point of contact internally and at your agency and spend time on aligning goals and vision for the project. As you get further into the production and design stages, you actually want fewer executives in the room. Someone has to have veto power, and you want to avoid getting stuck in political battles Once your team is assembled, and before you meet for the first time, I would actually recommend meeting with eveyrone individually to ensure they all see the project goals and map in the same way, and manage expectations before you throw everyone in the same boat together and expect to collaborate.
- You can’t set sail on this journey without a vessel to travel in. In this case, I’m talking about a content management system for your new website. So a web content management is like a ship? Is that what I’m telling you? Yes, exactly. CMS selection critical for the long haul—it’s not just about building the site, but about the journey home and every future destination you might sail to. You don’t have to have a design project to choose a new CMS, but a design project is often the best time to reassess whether what you have in place is going to meet your long-term needs and enable you to build a more effective site. Who is steering this ship? Who is maintaining the website once it goes live? – you? Your agency? Multiple teams across your entire organization? If you want ownership of the site, make sure you own the decisions around the CMS you use, and know how it’s going to impact your ability to manage your site in the long term.
- Even if you understand that a lot can change on the way, you still need to chart a course to your destination based on the information you have available Agencies often call this the discovery phase – this is when you surface goals and concerns, any limitations in terms of resources or scheduling You should also research your audience, your industry, look at the competition, consider your past projects, and generally remove as many unknowns as possible Based on your intended go-live date, business goals, budget, and availability of people and resources, create a conservative, sensible timeline for your project with milestones and enough time to reach them This is also when you should come up with the right information architecture for your site to ensure that what you build is well organized and user friendly.
- So what sort of gear do you need for this kind of expedition? Fortunately, you can pack pretty light, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of work involved. Besides having a budget You should do a thorough content and SEO audit of your website Ultimately it’s your content that’s going to engage your future audience and keep them coming back and doing business with you. Don’t assume that you can just stick with what you’ve got already. While your designers are worried about design stuff—or even before the project starts—assess whether your content is going to help your new site or hinder it Content review/audit Branding standards Budget Strategy, strategy, strategy
- SEO Content marketing Understanding wireframing and other design terms Consensus-building Communication All of these are going to be critical skills for you to get through this redesign alive. Most of us marketers are Jacks and Jills of all trades, but definitely brush up on what you know and don’t know ahead of this project. Don’t assume that your VP of sales will know how to look at wireframes, that your design agency knows anything about content marketing, or that your product manager knows what SEO is. You will be everyone’s guide, translator, and navigator. The more comfortable you are with the various disciplines it takes to put a website together, the more you can help everyone on the team stay collaborative and cordial.
- When your team is less hands-on, communication becomes more important, you can’t over-communicate with everyone Stay focused on the goal and be prepared to firmly, but politely remind everyone why you’re there and how to keep the conversation both constructive and productive When something doesn’t go according to plan or the original schedule, your team will look to you to assure them that you can still course correct, and make the necessary changes to keep things moving forward Be organized, forthcoming, and don’t take anyone’s attitude personally. This is scary for them too, and no one wants to be wrong about how to reach your goals.
- Inevitably, something will break down. The designer will have her baby early. You’ll get a surge of political pressure to accelerate the timeline and launch on your CEO’s birthday. You might not be able to anticipate everything that can go wrong, but you can have a plan B, C, and so forth, and build in more time than you think you’ll need Have contingency plans for your contingency plans, and expect that things might change quickly and that it’s not necesesarily a reflection on your or your team. Things just happen. The important part is to remain organized and communicative, know what your backup plan is, and keep going.
- Everyone is Tired, hungry, cold, indignant Shackleton and his team survived on the Antarctic ice for nearly 2 years, with a destroyed ship and little hope of rescue because he knew how to keep his crew engaged and motivated. The project has been in progress for weeks, or months.. Eveyrone is a little sick of it and just wants to be done already. It’s like the return journey in some ways. The initial excitement has worn off and people start disappearing on you. Look for ways to keep your team engaged with the project, and busy in productive ways. QA is a great way to do that. Now is the time to muster extra focus and motivation. You still need to QA the site – test links Tech audit to make sure your SEO will be good Third party tools – marketing automation Bring in reinforcements – QA can be a distributed exercise that involves more people than the original core team But you definitely want to do all this stuff prior to launch so that on day one, you have a site you feel excited about Order the pizza -- have the late nights
- So here’s The big secret: your website is never really finished All that stuff you just suffered through is just the tip of the iceberg because a website is not static Even after his expedition, Shackleton didn’t hang up his snowshoes and wool socks, he was onto the next thing. Once you hit the south pole--what's next? Social media? Next project? video True explorers are never done exploring and marketers never stop marketing. Make sure you commit resources to ongoing QA in the first weeks Conduct a post mortem 6 months after launch to see whether you reached the goals you were aiming for And continue testing and evolving your site to make it the successful lead generation and sales machine you always believed it could be
- Resources People Skills Preparation Perseverance This is a highlight form our 65 page complete website redesign handbook - which if you haven't downloadedd it, it's on our website, but we'll also put the link in the chat window and you can follows us on Twitter @percussion