Surviving and Thriving During a Website Relaunch

Yesterday, Nancy Prater from Ball State and I presented a session at the CASE V conference in Chicago that was a case study of how Ball State, in partnership with mStoner, approached the relaunch of the University’s website.

Nancy presented a fairly detailed description of the project (as detailed as you can get in a 1.25-hour session!), talked about why Ball State needed to move forward with a website relaunch, and talked about the process they used to take apart—and rebuild—their site. Here’s a handout for the session. [This is a PDF of Nancy’s slides.]

From my own standpoint, just a few observations about Nancy’s presentation.

One of the key success factors for a major project like this is support from University leadership. Not only did the senior staff at Ball State support the relaunch, but President Jo Ann Gora was a major backer. That helps to clear political hurdles and alerts people across campus about how important the project is.

I couldn’t count the number of times Nancy mentioned the words “conversation” and “meeting.” Make no mistake—the more engagement there is with stakeholders in a project like this one, the more successful the outcome.

As I was listening to Nancy talk, I was aware of how many people contributed to the success of this project: from Ball State’s developers, to writers in the marketing office, to members of our own team. But one of the most important people in the mix was Nancy herself. Having a project leader who is a skilled communicator and who understands what kind of communications (emails, blogs, meetings) are necessary; whom to communicate with; and when to communicate is essential to the long-term success of the project. Nancy also has an ability to see the big picture and to dive into the details. Just the kind of skills that you want in someone leading a long-term, complicated project with many potential snags.

Michael’s Ten Essentials for a Successful Website Relaunch

As for my part of the session, I talked about a number of ways in which Ball State’s paid attention to essential elements that I believe are key to the success of a project like this one. These are in the PDF handout, but I’m adding them here because the sub-points don’t appear there.

1. Achieve clarity first.

• about what you need to do to the site: site redesign or site redevelopment?


• set the right goals


• be realistic about technology needs

2. Focus on audience needs.

• who is the audience?


• what do they want to learn? what do they want to do?


• what do you want them to know


• what actions do you want them to take?

3. Recruit the right allies.

• funders


• enthusiasts


• people whose pain you can alleviate


• people who can make things happen


• your president and his/her senior staff

4. Educate friend and foe.

• involve your campus in the process


• establish stakeholder groups from day 1

5. Be realistic about your timeline and budget.

• two of three: “fast/cheap/good”


• critical investment in your most important communications channel


• critical technology infrastructure investment

6. Begin with content.
7. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

• establish clear communications with stakeholders from the outset


• email, blog, meetings & presentations

8. Test, test, test.

• usability tests


• concept tests


• ongoing tests & research

9. Work starts when the site launches.

• don’t do anything you can’t sustain.

10. Go back to point 1.

Other Resources

I added some other resources to the handout, but in case you want them now, here they are:

College of William & Mary [ur=http://www.wm.edu/reweb]re.web blog[/url]
Karine Joly: “10 Tips to a Successful Website Redesign”
Michael Stoner: “Redesign or Redevelopment? Be Clear What Your Site Needs Before You Start Work”
Michael Stoner: “Mistakes Institutions Make in Website Redesigns”

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