Team update: 12 – 25 November

Posted on 25 November, 2015 by

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.

Using Siteimprove to Find Content and Assets on your Website

Posted on 20 November, 2015 by Anne

You may already be using Siteimprove Quality Assurance reports to help fix broken links and misspelling on your website, or find content inconsistencies. If so, then I hope you’ve found it a useful tool to help keep content up to date.

The Inventory module is another function of Siteimprove that we think you’ll find useful when reviewing website content and assets.

You might want to locate a document or telephone number on your website or need help with decluttering your website to prepare for Go Mobile. The inventory module can help with this.

How to use the Inventory module

Siteimprove’s Inventory module provides an overview of all content on your site including:

pages
links and link text
documents
media files
scripts
personal information eg email addresses and telephone numbers

You’ll find a link to the Inventory in the left-hand panel of your Siteimprove report. The summary page lists the number of assets on your site:

To get at the details you can click into the categories on the left.

In this example, clicking the ‘documents’ section gives an overview of:

documents types (PDF, Excel, Powerpoint)
Internal (documents within your website)
External (links to documents on other websites)

From this table you can click through and view all documents (useful if you’re decluttering your site) or focus on a particular document type:

Here you can see a list of all PDF files linked to from the website broken down by:

url of each document
file size
link status – eg broken
pages that link to the document
last time modified

You can filter the list to view just external or internal PDFs by clicking on the ‘all categories’ field. You can also sort documents within each column.

For example, you can sort the ‘last time modified’ column to find out when a document was last uploaded to your site. This is useful to help you decide if an asset should be updated or removed.

You can also see where a document is linked from on your site and from here click through to view the document link in the page. If a document is not linked up this usually means it can be deleted as it’s not in use.

As you can see from the example below, the Marine handbook is linked to from three pages on the website:

Using the Inventory module to review content

Documents

As shown by the examples above, you can use the inventory tool to locate and check documents on your site.

Keep emails and phone numbers up-to-date

Out-of-date contact information will affect the credibility of your content. Use the inventory module to review email addresses and telephone numbers and check the format against our editorial style (University Login required).

image files

You can also use the inventory tool to check where an image is on your site, and when it was last updated. Updating the images on your site helps with search engine optimisation (SEO), giving the search fresh content to crawl.

Regularly review and update content

It’s important to regularly review and update your content as inaccurate content can damage the credibility of your site.

Next time you review your website content, try out the Inventory module in Siteimprove.

View the Siteimprove Inventory video tutorial to get started.

Access to Siteimprove

Request access to Siteimprove (University Login required) to get started on your website content clean up.

Team Update: 29 October – 11 November

Posted on 11 November, 2015 by Jiajun

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.

Decluttering Your Website: How to Prepare for Go Mobile

Posted on 10 November, 2015 by Jiajun

As we embark on phase 2 of Go Mobile, eager editors across the University are asking when their site will be going through the process. We’re thrilled that our editors are keen to get started.

We’re still finalising the schedule for phase 2. In the meantime, there’s plenty you can do to prepare your site for Go Mobile. In fact, the more you do beforehand the easier the process will be.

Delete, delete, delete

One of the most useful tasks you can do to prepare for Go Mobile is to delete any clutter from your site. Delete old versions of documents, images and logos that you’re no longer linking to in your content.

Similarly, delete old news and events items that are no longer relevant. If this information is still needed, rework it. For example, you could write a review of an event that has already taken place.

Check the currency of your content and consider whether it’s still relevant.

If content is out of date and no longer relevant to your site purpose it’s best to delete it. For more information about how out of date information can harm your website read Jane’s blog post: Why Deleting Old Stuff on Your Website is Good.

Check the accuracy of your content

It might seem like a dull task but ensuring that your content is accurate is crucial to the credibility of your site.

Users will be less likely to trust what you say if your content is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes, or if a link leads to nothing but a dead end. As pointed out by Kara Pernice from the Neilsen Norman Group, a link is a promise.

Tools like Siteimprove can help to find broken links and misspellings on your site.

Improve readability

The easier content is to understand the more accessible your message will be to your target audience.

Online readers are more task-focused and tend to scan content rather than read it all. Smaller screens increase this behaviour. So it’s essential to optimise your content for a smaller screen so that users can understand your content on any device they view it on. Part of this involves deleting unnecessary words.

For advice on optimising content for mobile take a look at our top five tips for writing for the web. An effective tool for identifying the readability of your writing is the Hemingway Editor.

Source new assets

As you’ll find out when you attend our Website Media Management training, images need to be larger in the new template. This is so that they retain their quality across all devices.

The majority of images that currently exist on your site won’t be big enough to work in the new template. Sourcing the original images will therefore give you a head start for when your site goes through Go Mobile. Check our Go Mobile Demo site for an idea of the new image sizes.

Go Mobile is an opportunity to check that your imagery is effectively supporting your messages. For guidance on sourcing imagery read Jane’s blog post on improving your website images and videos. For advice about editing images read Emma’s post: Editing Images for Use on Your Website.

Insights into Go Mobile

Find extra tips from editors who have already been through the Go Mobile process in our series of guest posts. Fiona Simmons from the Institute of Social Renewal talks about her experience of Go Mobile. Ivan Lazarov from the Press Office shares his reflections on the Go Mobile training.

Summary

So that’s a whistle stop tour of how you can prepare your site for Go Mobile. The most helpful thing you can do is to review your content. Make sure it will be readable on a mobile phone and delete old content and assets that are no longer relevant to your messages. Go forth and declutter!

Get in touch

Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about preparing your site for Go Mobile.

Content Governance: People, Processes and Policies

Posted on 4 November, 2015 by

I’m not sure why I’ve drawn the short straw here: I get to introduce you all to the idea of content governance. Wait, don’t leave yet!

2005: we had websites with no direction

We only have to roll back about 10 years to see what our website was like with minimal governance. We had duplicated content all over the place. There were sites that didn’t follow our branding. We had a team of content-putter-uppers who just did but didn’t ask why.

What’s changed?

We still get asked to “just build a website” or “stick some content on this page”. But, nowadays, the answer is just as likely to be “no” as “yes”.

This is because we have content policies, style guides, training and the right people: our content governance.

Going mobile is helping us with content governance

We’re using the Go Mobile programme to reinforce the importance of governance. There are some elements to making it a success: people, lifecycle, style guides and training.

People

With each new project we’re making sure we have at least one named editor. This means we’ve got a person in post whose job it is to manage the website and its content.

We’re still not 100% there. Web editor roles are often part of another post at the University. We are getting some accountability. And we’re working on making sure content editors have enough time to edit.

Content life cycle

Each Go Mobile site development isn’t just a project with an end date. We’re planning reviews of site content to make sure we’re maintaining quality.

We’re working with editors to introduce content management tools. These include editorial calendars, analytics and Siteimprove.

Style guides

We’ve had a set of web content standards from day one. We’ve just not been good at letting people know about them or enforcing them.

Go Mobile is raising awareness not only that our standards exist but also of their importance. These are not rules for the sake of it. They’re there to help our site users access the content they need on all devices.

If content doesn’t meet our standards, we have the authority to say it doesn’t go live.

Training

We can’t write a style guide, leave it hidden in a cupboard somewhere and then moan if people don’t use it! So we’ve developed training to help communicate our standards. We’ve produced a demo site that presents our new content design in the context of our standards.

Beyond Go Mobile

Through Go Mobile, we’re developing a skilled group of content editors. They are responsible for our web content and will be ambassadors for maintaining quality websites.

We’ve bench-marked our sites. We know how well they score for readability and whether they follow our new standards.

We’re planning to review sites around 6-8 months after they’ve launched. This will help us make sure we’re maintaining quality.

Content governance covers much more than I’ve outlined here – if we can get this right though, we’re well on our way to managing our web content effectively.

Let us know in the comments how you keep on top of content quality. Do you have any formal content governance?