Team Update: 4 – 15 January 2016

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We’re half way through January already and Christmas is just a distant memory. Here’s what we’ve been up to for the first couple of weeks of the new year.

Go Mobile programme

Lisa has rebuilt the Science Central website in T4. She’s edited the content so that it works in the new mobile responsive template.

Work has started on the central sites (International, Careers and Alumni) that are going through Go Mobile with an aim to go live mid-March.

We’re busy recruiting our new faculty web managers and content officers. That means planning interviews, inductions and new office space.

Design and technical developments

We’ve added Google Analytics tracking to the global menu links to see how it is used.

We often work with the University IT Service and third party developers to produce web applications. We’ve produced digital brand and visual identity guidelines to ensure consistency across these products.

The next batch of virtual tours are due to be converted to the responsive template by Revolution Viewing. This means we’ll have all virtual tours ready for the sites going through phase 2 of Go Mobile.

The Careers and School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering sites have been copied into the pre-migration template. We’re working on these now to get them ready to migrate into T4.

Training and support

We’ve received 33 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 26 of them.

Anne’s been getting to grips with Adobe Connect web conferencing software. She’ll be using it to deliver two Contribute webinars to colleagues in Malaysia next week.

Planning is underway for our first ever web editor community event. For the first session we’ve invited editors with sites that have been through the Go Mobile programme and come out the other side.

Plans for the next few weeks

The University’s new Head of Digital, Graham Tyrrell, starts with us next week. We’ll be taking some time getting to know him and showing him what we’re working on.

We’ve got planning and writing for the web, and T4 training sessions running on 21 and 28 January.

Improving Introductions

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You might have read our post on Making New Year’s Resolutions for our Websites: mine was improving introductions to content. I’m going to expand on what this means in this post.

We’re often reworking existing content rather than writing from scratch. And because of this it’s easy to get lazy and not bother to rework the introduction. The concern is that because it looks a little bit different, that’s enough.

Image showing the difference between a page title, introduction and body text.

Our introduction is styled to look different to body text.

The introduction style is a new feature of our responsive design. It follows the title of a page and is a larger font size to help highlight it. It also comes with its own content standards, it should:

  • summarise the point of the page
  • be no more than 50 characters
  • be descriptive

Working out if your introduction is any good

I’m inspired by Ida Aalen’s approach to this on the Gather Content blog about Testing the Usability of Text (particularly your introduction).

She suggests putting a copy of your content into word and printing it out. You then fold the paper so only the title and introduction are visible.

Image of page introduction with content hidden - three questions that I think the hidden content might answer have been added.

Will this content answer the questions I’ve asked?

Next step, ask yourself (or your site users) to read the title and introduction. You should then jot down three questions that you think the content will answer.

Once done, you can review the page content and see whether it does what you expect. If it doesn’t, you can rewrite the page content or improve your introduction.

In this case, I’m pleased to say that the page answers the questions I thought of – view our content on the Memorabilia Shop.

Have a go

Do your introductions work for you? Why not try this out on your colleagues or site users to objectively assess your content? Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Related blog posts

Making New Year’s Resolutions for Our Websites

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At the beginning of December I set the editorial team a little task; to come up with their new year’s resolutions for our websites. I gave no more guidance than that. Here’s what they came up with.

Introducing your content

Linda’s resolution is to write better introductions to content. She says:

“It’s so easy to slip into the lazy habit of just making the first sentence on the page into the introduction. And then not bothering to amend it.”

The introduction style is a new feature of our responsive design. It follows the title of a page and is a larger font size to help highlight it. It also comes with its own content standards, it should:

  • summarise the point of the page
  • be no more than 50 characters
  • be descriptive

Advice from the experts

We read lots of blogs, articles and books to keep up to date with what’s going on in the world of web content and design. This helps us to improve the University’s website for our users. We also use what we learn to develop the services we provide to our web editors.

Lisa says:

“My resolution is to come up with a systematic process for reading, collating and, most importantly, using the information I read to help inform our work.”

Content strategy

Jane’s not one to shy away from a challenge. Her resolution is to come up with a content strategy for the University website as a whole! We’re so used to thinking about the websites of schools and services as separate entities, we shouldn’t forget that they’re all part of the University website.

She says:

“We have a core content strategy for the Postgraduate website – now let’s tackle the rest!”

As if this weren’t enough we’ll also be looking at an overall tone of voice for University web content.

Housekeeping

My resolution is a bit of a backwards one – I’m taking a process I do well for websites, and applying it offline.

I’m meticulous about following our standards for file naming when it comes to documents and images I upload to the web. But I’m not very good at keeping on top of it in my computer’s documents folders. This year I want to change that.

This will not only help me to find files but also allow me to match up what’s online and where they’re saved elsewhere.

Health check

Anne’s resolution is to check her Siteimprove reports in January for broken links or misspellings which may have appeared over the Christmas break. And to keep on top of actions from these weekly reports throughout the year.

January might also be a good time to review the assets attached to your website (documents in particular) to make sure they’re all up-to-date. You can review assets using the Inventory function in Siteimprove.

Make your own resolutions

Now it’s your turn. What would you like to do differently this year? What tools or tips can you use to make your content management easier? Is there something you’d like to learn more about?

Follow our lead and make a resolution of your own. If you’re feeling brave, share it in the comments and we’ll check in to see how you’re getting on.

Team Update: 10 – 23 December

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After months of hard work from the Web Team, Undergraduate Marketing and our IT Service, the Undergraduate website is now responsive.

The Undergraduate site is one of the largest and most popular parts of the ncl.ac.uk web presence. It uses many of the Go Mobile design features (grids, mastheads, buttons) and also introduces a few bespoke elements:

  • at a glance course content
  • student profiles
  • related courses

The whole site has been updated in line with our writing for mobile standards; this means our site users should find it easier to access the content. The new site makes full use of our template’s ability to support larger images and video content.

Lisa is working with colleagues in the Institute for Sustainability to rebuild the Science Central site in T4.

Emma C is working with colleagues in Marketing and Student Recruitment and the International Office to prepare the International website for Go Mobile.

Design and Technical developments

Peter has been working on the pre-migration template for the International website. He has also taken copies of the Undergraduate PDF brochures. This allows the UG Marketing team to work with ReportLab to get their system to work with the new Undergraduate website.

Andy has been working on amends to the Undergraduate course profile for use on tablet and mobile devices.

The tech team also conducted final Internet browser testing. This makes sure that amended scripts and styles are cross browser compliant.

Training and support

Emma C ran our last two training sessions of the year, both on Media Management. And she’s working on a report template to present the excellent training feedback we’ve been getting.

We’ve received 27 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 22 of them.

Campaigns and web developments

Steve has been working on a new University International Relations external facing website. The aim of the site is to communicate our internationalisation priorities to an external audience. It includes a Google map showing all our strategic partnerships, and UK and overseas campuses.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re closing shop for the Christmas break. Here’s what some of the team will be doing over the holidays:

  • Linda plans to drink Christmas ales, eat Wensleydale and cranberry cheese and listen to festive Bob Dylan songs
  • Lisa will be eating chocolates and enjoying some cheesy Christmas films
  • Anne will be doing most of the above but will substitute the ale for wine
  • Emma C will be baking stollen and playing Trivial Pursuit

And we’ll all be returning to work on January 4th eager to get stuck in to phase 2 of Go Mobile.

Our Most Popular Posts of 2015

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Since we started this blog in March 2015 we’ve written 75 posts for your reading pleasure. We hope you’ve found them interesting and useful. This post is a round-up of our most popular posts from the year. It’s a chance for you to revisit an old favourite, or perhaps discover something new.

The top five

  1. Find Content Inconsistencies Quickly and Easily Using Siteimprove Policy
  2. Why ‘Under Construction’ Notices are Bad Practice
  3. Top Five Tips for Writing for the Web
  4. Why Deleting Old Stuff On Your Website is a Good Idea
  5. Meet the Supporting Case for Your Core Content

I see a common theme among these posts; they all offer practical advice to help you improve your content. They support concepts that we’re introducing to our editors through the Go Mobile training, but are applicable to all our web editors.

My favourite post

This is a tough call. And even though there’s no pressure on me to pick a single post, I’m going to… because that’s how I roll.

Two contenders for this accolade are also in the list of the top five most popular. They are Jane’s post on deleting old stuff and Linda’s post on supporting content. These were the first posts in which I think people’s characters started to come through in their writing.

The one I’ve chosen as my favourite is Lisa’s post on improving your web content with help from Google Analytics. It connects the tool to a real world example on the Open Day website. It shows how you can use analytics data as evidence for decisions about content updates on your site or marketing activities.

What’s your favourite? Let us know which post/s you found the most informative or entertaining in the comments.