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Andersenwindows Content Migration Case Study
1. Title Here and Here and HereAndersenwindows.com Content Migration Case Study
2. 2
Agenda
-Andersen's content situation prior to
migration
-The audit process
-Engaging content owners
-Content creation with teams new to
creating web content
-Workplans
-Content migration templates
-Trial and error with auto loading
content
11. 11
Work Plan Contents
•Scope: What pages or section they will be
responsible for
•Who are the team members and
roles/responsibilities
•Workload and capacity estimates
•Timeline
•Process – what you are asking them
to do
•Other: wireframes, page tables, research
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Key Lessons
• Work plan is your tool to resourcing and collaborating
• Look for opportunities to automate content loading and outsource
activities
• Work closely with tech teams to understand how CMS is being built
and requirements
• Content migration is difficult. Take it one day at a time!
• Remember the old method - KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
• Make it fun!
Engaged with Modern Climate in May 2012 and Launched new site on Halloween. Since then, have made aggressive improvements to the site. Site info: 48 product detail pages, 800 tech docs, articles, project images, 4000 dealers. 4.4 million visits per year. Now creating new page templates, lead generation, and starting work on phase 2 which will add more features and tools to the site.
Others may relate to this. Reasons for redesigning site. Old site would break with every update. As of end of October, could not edit anything (even a word) within old site because it crumbled (in the background) Old framework; needed to blow it up. My goal: strong, solid foundation that could grow and change with us. Foundation for EFFICIENT improvement. Microsites for marketing.
In a typical web project, content migration may not be planned for. Everyone is focused on new functionality and design. Content creation may not even be discussed or budgeted. Need to add content planning, analysis, and migration to the project plan. Should be overlayed throughout project. Resources, budget, and timing needed may depend on your strategy.
Understand your deliverables and plan your deadlines. Andersen’s project plan looked like this: instead of a sequence, we developed in sprints with high priority templates developed first, which included our product detail pages. This meant that while we were loading content, at the same time, we were also designing other templates so we were moved very quickly. Check points along the way such as dates for sending sample content for development to test functionality. Plan worked well for me because we were constantly pushed throughout timeline.
Became great at multitasking.
Create a workplan for each team involved: SMEs, legal, web, creative, etc. Divide by internal teams or similar tasks. Sit down and walk them through the process. This ensured everyone was on the same page. Your ask: they need to help you inventory content and decide what can stay or go. They need to help plan content needs and define page content.
Note: you may need to alter your approach for some teams. For example, this documentation didn’t work well for creative team but worked very well for marketing and legal. For creative, needed more visual walkthrough of process and content needs.
Audit example – inventory of pages on old site divided by section of the site and SME. Asked groups to be responsible for auditing their content and determining what should stay, go, be rewritten or merged.
Don’t forget to create a workplan for yourself as well! Estimate time to Include content migration plan in overall plan. Budget, timing, and resources. Original pass at resource needs. This would be if we had 2 of me. Brought on 2 full time contractors. Brought on 2 part time contractors. Cursed project. Sick, vacations. Plan for delays and unplanned changes.
Include content migration plan in overall plan. Budget, timing, and resources. Original pass at resource needs. This would be if we had 2 of me. Brought on 2 full time contractors. Brought on 2 part time contractors. Cursed project. Sick, vacations. Plan for delays and unplanned changes.
Determine approach to migrating content. To put plan together, need to understand how to migrate content. Options for migrating content: Automated: if systems allow, content organization is consistent, if you have structured the data. Need to work with tech team to determine possibilities and requirements. Junk in/junk out
Manual copy/paste. When this can be used: new content formats, Hybrid In all situations, you need to clean up your content prior to migration: structure, content within, images, videos, child/parent relationships In Andersen’s case, we did a hybrid depending on template. In all cases, we blew up old content, redefined needs, and created new per requirements.
Migrated 900 Technical Documents into new cms through automated process, but lots of work was done up front to define all elements. Proofed load by sending sample data. Automated dealer locator data. Automated redirects.
Example of page on the web. Spreadsheet provided content for facets and document names and URLs.
Structured data requires structured content entry planning. Content is not entered as one page chunk. It is broken up into many pieces of content and content entry process may be different for each piece. Optimizing the CMS purpose which is to allow shared data between pages. Get involved in the development process as early as possible. Need to understand how content entry will occur depending on how CMS is built. For our site, entry is done in 3 separate places. We have images, data, and the page.
Content migration using excel – my migration spreadsheet matched CMS requirements for loading content. Product: spreadsheets for selecting items, uploading and optimizing images, and copy. Spreadsheets don’t work for everyone.
Think creatively. Engaged people from other departments to enter content. Downside: you need to do a lot of upfront work to make sure the steps are crystal clear. Plan a QA process.
