{"id":884,"date":"2010-07-13T12:30:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T11:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=884"},"modified":"2016-04-13T10:36:06","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T09:36:06","slug":"iwmw10-no-money-no-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/07\/iwmw10-no-money-no-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"IWMW10: No Money, No Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Boag &#8211; for blogpost on this talk see <a href=\"http:\/\/boagworld.com\/talks\/no-money\">http:\/\/boagworld.com\/talks\/no-money<\/a> &#8211; lots of talk about &#8216;make do and mend&#8217; at the moment. But the coming cuts are the most exciting opportunity that you&#8217;ve ever had!<\/p>\n<p>This is an opportunity to change how you work &#8211; to embrace best practice from the rest of the web. Establish university web teams as a driving force in the web world. Paul very very up beat about this! He sees two big opportunities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Opportunity to simplify &#8211;\u00a0Universities have more legacy (in their websites) than anyone else on the web<\/li>\n<li>Opportunity to approach things differently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Simplicity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) &#8211; said a lot, but really really true. At the moment you have massively bloated, unmanagable websites. Why? When you start to talk about simplifying website and removing content you get responses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>But somebody might find it useful<\/li>\n<li>Well my content is too important to remove<\/li>\n<li>Users might not understand<\/li>\n<li>But we need to convince users<\/li>\n<li>Well its not my job to remove content (question &#8211; who in your organisation is responsible for removing content from your website)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can no longer afford to maintain websites at their current size. Can&#8217;t keep content up to date, complicated to change, difficult for users to find content &#8211; too much stuff. Paul uses Microsoft as an example &#8211; they used to put everything online &#8211; and then a search for something like basic help with Excel brings back loads of stuff including research whitepapers etc.<\/p>\n<p>So many people involved in putting content on site &#8211; can&#8217;t keep quality high.<\/p>\n<p>Biggest issue &#8211; no time to think strategically about the website. Lack of planning for the next few months &#8211; how is your web site going to change in the next 6 months? It is growing organically not strategically.<\/p>\n<p>Paul says &#8220;Less money means a smaller website&#8221; &#8211; so we should:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Remove content<\/li>\n<li>Hide content<\/li>\n<li>Shrink content<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Always try to remove content first.<\/p>\n<p>Hide &#8211; example of a &#8216;get started&#8217; guide on Wiltshire Farm Foods &#8211; shows the first time, then collapses to compact display after that (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wiltshirefarmfoods.com\/\">http:\/\/www.wiltshirefarmfoods.com\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Another example &#8211; move links you don&#8217;t want to do see &#8211; small text, bottom of the page.<\/p>\n<p>But politics get in the way &#8211; Paul says, avoid politics, embrace policies. Universities like policies! Paul says introduce some of the following policies (not necessarily all of them):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The link on the homepage with the fewest clicks will be replaced &#8211; automatically with another link &#8211; content gets pushed off the homepage if it doesn&#8217;t get enough response<\/li>\n<li>Pages that not meet minimum levels of views and dwell time will be unpublished &#8211; not deleted, but triggers review process &#8211; for content provider to come to talk to you about improving for republication<\/li>\n<li>Pages that are not regularly updated will be unpublished until reviewed &#8211; e.g. after 6 months &#8211; could follow email notifications &#8211; although could just let them find it. All they need to do is look at the page and decide to republish<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These policies can be automated.<\/p>\n<p>However, if unpublishing is too radical &#8211; rather than doing that, remove from navigation and search, insert a message on the page saying out of date.<\/p>\n<p>If you could implement these three policies think about how much smaller your website would get immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Paul moving on now to working with external organisations. Suggests that web teams work at 2 levels:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keeping website running, keeping it up to date<\/li>\n<li>Running big projects that will &#8216;solve all problems with x&#8217; &#8211; e.g. re-vamp information architecture, redesign whole website<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is in the second area universities enage external companies &#8211; like Paul&#8217;s. He thinks that in general Universities are wasting their money when they do this!<\/p>\n<p>These big projects tend to throw away all previous work. Also they bunch up expenditure into one place &#8211; e.g. once every two years need huge investment to redesign etc. websites. Also, often very interlinked set of big projects &#8211; combine new user interface, with re-branding exercise, with content management system implementation etc. &#8211; all have interlinked dependencies, and are all complex projects &#8211; creates huge problems and slows everything down.<\/p>\n<p>Outside providers tend to be treated as &#8216;pixel pushers&#8217; &#8211; tend not to use their expertise.<\/p>\n<p>More agile approach needed &#8211; should be looking at doing one month &#8216;sprints&#8217; &#8211; i.e. deliver something every month &#8211; at end of sprint should have measurable return associated with it. More continuous development &#8211; advantages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t throw away existing work<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t have single point of massive expenditure<\/li>\n<li>Avoids complex interdependencies<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t throw massive changes at users<\/li>\n<li>Build ongoing partnership with external agencies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Paul suggests getting external view regularly &#8211; doesn&#8217;t have to be commercial company &#8211; could be someone from other institution web team. Once a month &#8211; meet with external, do some user testing, set sprint goals, talk strategically<\/p>\n<p>Paul recommends <a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/9314715\">&#8220;Rocket Surgery Made Easy&#8221; by Steve Krug<\/a> to see how you can do regular usability testing quickly and easily.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Smaller sites<\/li>\n<li>Ditch &#8216;big projects&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>Think strategically<\/li>\n<li>Have a monthly roadmap<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Boag &#8211; for blogpost on this talk see http:\/\/boagworld.com\/talks\/no-money &#8211; lots of talk about &#8216;make do and mend&#8217; at the moment. But the coming cuts are the most exciting opportunity that you&#8217;ve ever had! This is an opportunity to change how you work &#8211; to embrace best practice from the rest of the web. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-iwmw10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1858,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/1858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}