Go Mobile programme

Planning for phase 2 of Go Mobile is underway.

We’re recruiting for some new staff in the new year and planning an office move: this is all to help us complete the Go Mobile Programme.

There’s a lot to sort out so we’re getting ahead where we can.

There has been planning of sitemaps and requirements for the Alumni, Giving, International, Careers Service and Accommodation sites.

Undergraduate (UG) work continues. The majority of pages are nearing completion. We’re entering a period of proofing and checking.

Lisa has been finalising audits for the Business School and Careers websites, which will be going through the Go Mobile process early next year.

The Digital Institute site is now live!

Design and Technical developments

The tech team are ironing out some snags which arose during the development of the Phase 1 sites.

Catherine is working on documentation to outline some of the processes involved in importing and setting up new sites in T4.

Peter has been developing changes to the T4 UG template so we can export editable PDFs of content. This means that our outsourced proofing can all be handled online. As we work towards the deadline for go live, there have been technical changes to some of the UG specific T4 content types.

Andy has been collating the Phase 2 set of virtual tours to be converted for use on mobile devices. 28 additional tours have been identified and are in the process of being procured. There will also be updates to the virtual tour website.

Training and support

Interest in our training is increasing – sessions pre-Christmas are fully booked. We’ve a Planning and Writing Web Content sessions on the 26 November. Our new Media training is also going down well – we’ve two more sessions in December.

We’re now planning for training in phase 2 of Go Mobile and have sessions booked for the first two batches in 2016.

We’ve received 35 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 20 of them.

Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification

Jane has successfully passed her exams for the Content Strategy (days 1 and 2) course run by Nielsen Norman. Well done Jane!

Campaigns and web developments

Emma C is on a roller coaster of love and hate with Google Analytics. She’s developing a model to help set objectives and measure the success of specific areas of the site.

Jane has been helping the Press Office get ready to promote some televised debates, due for broadcast on Channel NewsAsia in December.

We added some pages to the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering website to promote our 2016 Doctoral Training Awards.

Plans for the next few weeks

Lisa is writing this month’s newsletter for the blog.

Anne’s working on a Contribute webinar for staff at NUMed.

We are providing support for the next Research Impact campaign in the run up to the end of the year.

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It’s that time again – read on to find out what we’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks.

Go Mobile programme

Plans for the next phase of Go Mobile are underway. We’re busy planning, meeting with site editors and carrying out preparation and benchmarking on the next batch of sites.

Linda met with our Alumni colleagues to start planning the Newcastle University Alumni and Giving to Newcastle sites. They’re up next for Go Mobile.

Jane met with editors from the Careers website while Steve and Lisa met with editors for the Science Central site.

The Accommodation Office are keen to get started with the process, we’re working with them to see what updates they can make to their site to help them prepare for the Go Mobile process.

If you’re thinking ahead why not take a look at our blog post on Decluttering your site for Go Mobile.

Design and Technical developments

The tech team have been busy with ongoing developments in T4 including:

• building a new sitemap for the website
• work on the Undergraduate and Press Office sites
• building the central virtual tours in T4

Andy and Catherine also met with the Publications team to discuss photography planning for the next phase of Go Mobile.

Training and support

Jane and Emma C delivered training on planning and writing web content for the next group of editors with sites in Go Mobile.

We’ve received the feedback from our first Web Media Management training sessions. It’s really positive and shows that this is a welcome addition to our programme of training for editors.

We’ve received 56 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 27 of them.

Industry conferences, workshops and training

Peter and Catherine are attending an advanced JavaScript course on-site.

Jane and Lisa attended the Content Strategy workshop at Nielsen Norman’s Usability Training Week in London. They came away with loads of ideas to develop and implement into Go Mobile – and affirmation that we’re doing great things from fellow content professionals.

Emma C will be attending the Nielsen Norman workshop on analytics and user experience workshop later this week.

Campaigns and web developments

Always thinking ahead, we’re reviewing the Clearing database ready for next August!

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re in the final five weeks of the Undergraduate site development. It’s all hands on deck to make sure we get all the content elements in place and the site signed off.

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Here we are again with your fortnightly catch-up on the work of the web team.

Progress on the Go Mobile programme

The new Press Office website was launched, bringing phase one of the programme to a close.

We’re planning the next phase of Go Mobile developments: audits are starting, meetings are being arranged. We’re aiming to start properly in January 2016.

Steve has been working on rebuilding the websites for Digital Institute and Physics in the new content management system (CMS).

Lisa is busy carrying out an audit of Newcastle University’s Business School website.

Emma C finished the rebuild of the Newcastle University London website in the CMS. It went live in time for the official launch of the London campus on 21 October.

We are working with the undergraduate marketing team to get all final elements and design features into their new website. The undergraduate team are currently working on content and images.

Design and technical developments

We released our latest iteration of the external homepage and implemented a new ‘mega menu’ across the Go Mobile sites. This as an extension of the global navigation links at the top of each page. This includes direct links to the most popular sections of our website. It replaces the ‘mega footer’ from the old design.

Training and support

We’ve received 33 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 16 of them.

Lisa has been making updates to the planning and writing web content training. We’re ready for the next round of training sessions in November and December.

Campaigns and web developments

Emma C’s been messing about in spreadsheets. Testing the Google Analytics add-on for Google Sheets and working out how we can combine analytics data into our content audits.

Steve has been working on the SAgE DTA website.

Lisa wrote a blog post about improving page titles and headlines.

Plans for the next few weeks

As we prepare for the next phase of Go Mobile there’s a number of opportunities to keep our skills up-to-date.

We’re sending a small contingent to Nielsen Norman’s Usability Training Week in London next month. Lisa and Jane will attend the content strategy workshop, while Emma C will be at the analytics and user experience workshop.

Peter and Catherine are attending an advanced JavaScript course on-site.

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Phew! so we’ve pretty much finished phase 1 of Go Mobile, and we’re already busily planning and refining work for phase 2 ….read on.

Go Mobile programme

The whole team got together for an away (half) day. We reviewed all the stages of the programme so far and worked out what went well and what we needed to improve.

It was great to get all our team together to share experiences, our success and of course a bit of cake! We’ll use the notes from the day to help plan the next phase of the programme.

Feedback on the new sites

We put a feedback form on the University’s homepage (and all sites in the new template) when we launched the new responsive design.

We’ve had 23 responses (with the majority coming from University staff). Staff feedback focuses on tasks associated with working at the University eg the location of the people search and accessing internal services like Human Resources and the Safety Office.

The staff homepage contains all of these links – it’s our recommended starting point for staff seeking internal information.

You can access the staff homepage from the global top menu: Staff & Students

We’ve also had some comments on the design of the search box in the top right so we’ll be improving that over the coming weeks.

Design and Technical developments

Finishing touches are being made to the new Press Office website, due for launch on October 19.

Certainly not ones to sit back – the tech team is already working on the latest iteration of the University homepage. We’re adding dynamic menus to the top level menu. This will help people to find other parts of the University’s website, and also reduce the number of clicks it takes to get there.

Training and support

Anne’s developed some bespoke T4 training for the Press Office. This is so they can get to grips with their new website, and also the new ways of publishing and writing press releases on the web.

Some fairly detailed hand-over notes are being prepared for the editor of the Research website. With a new Research Impact campaign already in the initial stages, it will soon be all-change for the current impact case studies on the website. So those big visual boxes will change to reflect the new case studies coming along.

We are still working on developing our next phase of training for Go Mobile. We’ve got some sessions in November and December ready for the editors of phase 2 sites, and catching back-up editors from phase 1.

Emma C delivered the first of our new Website Media Management training sessions on 12 October. The sessions were well received, one participant said: ‘I thought the session was extremely helpful. Very interactive and easy to follow’. We’ll be running more sessions for Go Mobile editors in the coming months.

We’ve received 30 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 12 of them.

Campaigns and web developments

Steve has launched a new site for the Institute for Agri-Food Research and Innovation (IAFRI).

Catherine has launched a new site for the Newcastle Academic Health Partners.

Lisa wrote this month’s newsletter for the blog and is writing a post about improving page titles/headlines.

Plans for the next few weeks

Continuing work on our evil plan… oops sorry Phase 2 of Go Mobile!
Phase 2 is scheduled to start January 2016 and finish December 2016, the next batch of sites are still being prioritised and agreed by Faculty Steering Groups and central senior management – so watch this space.

Feedback

Let us know what you think about our new mobile responsive websites – leave a reply.

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