Design Templates -> CMS Implementation

This post is co-authored by Bill McLaughlin and Greg Zguta.

Have you ever wondered how beautiful design comps transition into functional web pages? Or what mStoner Technical Leads use to configure and customize a content management system (CMS)?

Two words: Functional Specification.

?We borrow from software development methodology for much of our project management framework. Our approach is definitely “waterfall”—meaning we approach the project in a serial fashion: strategy then design then technical implementation. Our Functional Specification is essentially the detailed requirements specification—it spells out exactly how the website functions for the site visitor, and how the content editors will interact with the CMS to make it so. We flesh this out for each template in the creative design template suite, and we do it in detail.

It’s detailed, but it’s not technical. We strive to avoid technical jargon, references to the specific CMS in question and any description of how the web developer will approach the implementation. The key is to describe what the site will do, not how it will be implemented (the “how” comes later in the project). The audience we are trying to reach are marketing and communications professionals or web content contributors/editors.

If you are still reading this, you might be asking, why is this important???

First of all, we want to be sure we build the right website. Once designs are approved and the look and feel of the new site starts to take shape, expectations for how the site will function are formed. This means spelling out the details about things like if banner images should change randomly on each page or if the content editor should control how many news items are listed on a page. We want to do everything we can to ensure everyone has the same expectations, and that those expectations are met via the website.

We are also trying to avoid rework. Rework is the enemy of the project timeline and budget. Once we start configuring and customizing the CMS it’s harder to react to changes whether that’s adding fields or introducing regions or page components. Just as in the construction of a building, it’s much easier, cheaper and faster to make changes in documents before the heavy lifting begins.

Finally—and most importantly—we’re trying to do our best work. We want to be collaborative with our clients and each other on how content should be displayed and managed. While there are some best practices that work well across all sites, we find that spending quality time together thinking about how the site should work yields the best results. A great example of this is how important the integration of social media content has become. In a short period of time the standard practices around where content comes from and how it displays have evolved. We want to mesh the best of what’s tried and true with new ideas on how to make the best use of the technology.

?Having said all of this, the specification only works when our clients buy-in to the process. The number one sign that it’s working is that we are communicating—often via a long and tedious conference call or two. In these calls, our clients are typically voicing their pre-conceived ideas for how they envision the site working, and the way in which they want to manage their content. They may also be asking questions, clarifying points they don’t understand or asking for recommendations. If a client catches a typo or two it bodes well for the overall health of the project.

Always Improving

One of our goals for 2012 is to make improvements to our Functional Specification and the process of gaining consensus on the requirements for the site and CMS. We want to make the document less text heavy and easier to consume. We plan to shift some of this information to a more detailed wireframe than we have historically produced. And we see advantages to starting this earlier in the project, in parallel with creative design.

How have you tackled requirements on your CMS projects? What’s working for you? Is anyone applying Agile methods to their Website Redesign? We’d love to hear your thoughts on our approach and learn from the experience of others.?

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April 2011 Analytics Webinar Q&A

This post is a forum to field questions from today’s presentation of our analytics webinar. Thanks to everyone who attended.

Click here to download the presentation (PDF), and feel free to post your questions or comments about the analytics webinar below. Responses will come from the presenter Greg Zguta and the mStoner team.

UPDATE:

The new survey for the State of Analytics 2011 is now available from HigherEdAnalytics.com.

Fill out the survey and help contribute to the conversation about web analytics in higher ed!

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Back Burner Analytics

Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot more from our clients (and prospective clients) about website analytics. Everybody’s thinking about pageviews, hits, time on site, landing pages, internal and external visitors, and they should be: analytics is a critical part of not only proving the value of the investment an institution makes in its website, but also continually improving that site based on user feedback.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we hear is “we have Google Analytics installed, but no one is using it for much of anything.” It’s one of many things that gets pushed to the back burner when we’re focused on social media, mobile sites, implementing content management systems, producing videos and writing great content. The good news is that even if you don’t have time to focus on analytics this week or this month, there’s a lot you can do right now to be sure that you’ll have something to work with when you move analytics to the front burner and turn up the heat.

Get tracking.
An awful lot of folks are using Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s easy to implement on a site, and it provides some good functionality. If you don’t already have an analytics tool, keep it simple and install Google Analytics. But in higher education, be sure to think about more than just the main .edu site—consider tracking on microsites, blogs, athletics, and departmental servers as well. The Google Analytics tracking code is easy to install, and ensures that you have a way to record the traffic to the sites you would care most about, even if you won’t use it right away. Once you’re ready to consider your metrics more closely, you’ll already have a baseline set.

Be sure you are collecting data. For those of you who already have GA installed, you want to be sure that you’re actually gathering the information you want. The little piece of Google Analytics javascript tracking code needs to be installed on every page on your site. It’s easier said than done on sites that don’t use a content management system or are scattered groups of pages with different authors using different tools. Try this:

• Log into the Google Analytics site and click “view report” from the landing page showing your domains/profiles to view your data.


• Check to see that you have positive numbers that continue up to the present. You can also change the date parameters (in the top right of reports) to look back and check the data that you’ve been gathering. You can’t change the past, but you can be informed about what data you have collected. In higher education it is particularly useful to have a full year of consistent data, because year-over-year comparisons help to compare admissions cycles, the ebb and flow of semesters, and the other cycles that impact your audiences.
• Make sure the number of pageviews passes the “sniff test”—are the numbers in a reasonable ballpark for the content? It’s usually an issue of there being none or only a handful of pageviews which could indicate a problem. Click “Content” in the left navigation and check the “Top Content” report and make sure that pages you expect to be the most visited have lots of visits.
• Verify that there are pageviews across a variety of pages. If you aren’t sure whether tracking code is installed on certain pages, look for those pages in the “Top Content” report. Analytics are only gathered for pages with the tracking code, so in cases where the code isn’t easily added universally on the site, check specific pages to see that data is recorded for them.

Remember, you can’t recreate data that was never captured, so don’t make assumptions about what Google Analytics is gathering for you now. Be sure you’re getting what you need. Even if you aren’t doing much (or anything) with the analytics now, collecting good data will serve you well whenever you do train your focus on the analytics.

Own the account that collects your analytics. Some institutions have analytics accounts set up by a vendor and installed on a website for them. They have access to the data, but the account is not controlled by the institution itself, which means all data collected in the account is not controlled by the institution. Historical data can’t be moved from one account to another, so it’s important to “own your data”. Google stores the data, but the account owner controls access to it.

Higher education institutions should control their own free Google Analytics account and not be under the umbrella of another entity. If you have data going to an account that you don’t own, consider setting up your own account and swapping the existing tracking code for your new version. There won’t be continuity in the “old” vs. “new” account data since it will be in two places, but the sooner you control your data the better. You can still compare data between the two accounts and over time the data collected in the new account will be all you need.

Track site search. One of the simplest customizations you can make to Google Analytics is to enable search tracking, but Google Analytics does not do this by default. After viewing your reports in Google Analytics, click on the “Content” reports in the left navigation, and click on “Site Search”. Google will tell you right away if it is tracking search or not and provides instructions if you aren’t. Gathering data about what visitors are searching for on your site can be extremely valuable. Start collecting the data, even if you don’t know when you’ll get around to doing anything with it.

Get in a proactive frame of mind. When you do start to think about how website analytics can help you, stay away from getting overly excited about how many people are looking at content on your site. Higher ed sites get a lot of traffic—there are built-in audiences seeking you out! Instead, consider a more nuanced approach. Think about what how understanding visitor behavior on your site can help you do your job better—producing more useful content, improving information architecture, directing people to things they’re really looking for, giving key audiences reasons to take the next step with you, promoting events, ideas, people or programs that showcase your best assets.

Websites analytics are a great tool, and even more valuable when you’ve got a strong history to look back on. Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to be sure your analytics data will be there when you need it—it will repay you in kind when you’re ready to move ahead.

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