Team Update 1 – 14 October

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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.

Go Mobile: the Story So Far

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Our Go Mobile programme is up and running: 17, yes 17 (!) sites went live in September.

Phase 1 (our ‘beta/test/is this even possible’ phase) was a success. And because of this, we’re going to carry on and put the rest of our external-facing website through the programme.

Go mobile explained

Go Mobile is a project to make our website mobile responsive. This means it works on desktop computers as well as tablets and mobile phones.

But we’re not making things easy for ourselves. As well as adding a responsive design we’re also:

  • improving content – rewriting for mobile
  • updating assets – our new design needs higher quality images to support content
  • moving to a new content management system (TerminalFour – T4)

You can see some examples in action:

Oh no! Why have they changed everything?

Some of our feedback, particularly from University staff, has been unhappiness that we’ve changed or moved things. Remember we’re doing this for the greater good!

Our websites now work just as well on mobile as on huge desktop screens. Go Mobile is about improving access for all.

Key developments cover navigation, design and content

NAVIGATION

How you move through pages needs to be simpler and easier for mobile (smaller screens). Navigation is improved for those using desktops too. We’ve made sites shallower and removed redundant content.

DESIGN

Design enhances your website but doesn’t rule it. We’re always thinking about what our users want from the web content. For example, we’ve made sure that images are impactful and support our messages. But we’ve made sure that our template prioritises for you: on mobile, images shrink and drop under content.

Content

Text for mobile is written in short, easy to read paragraphs.  This helps when it’s stacked for smaller mobile screens.

We’ve also introduced styles like the introduction which helps to focus the point of the content on the web page. It’s allowed us to firm up our content standards. A paragraph should be around 20 words because this works better on mobile.

Even though this is part of writing for the web/writing for mobile, a lot of our changes are just about good writing generally.

So, how did we do it?

By magic of course! Well actually, a whole lot of design, technical and word wizardry.

We worked closely with colleagues in our IT Service (NUIT) as well as those in schools, faculties and central services.

We developed a brand new suite of training for our web editors. This covers editing in the new system, writing for the web, defining site objectives and using media (images and videos). We also introduced various tools to help you evaluate and improve content.

Find out what our web editors thought of the Go Mobile process.

Next steps

There are exciting times ahead. We’re turning attention to Phase 2. This is where we take the rest of the external website through Go Mobile. We’re planning to do this between January and December 2016.

It’s going to mean a lot of change for the team:

  • Agile ways of working
  • focused, time-bound project cycles to get through all the sites
  • extra staff
  • new office space

It’s going to mean a lot of commitment from our faculties and services. We need staff dedicated to developing their websites working with us and giving time for training on writing best practice and the new content management system.

We’d love to hear your comments on what we’re doing. Either comment here or use our feedback form.

How to Use the Core Model to Improve Your Web Content

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I came across the idea of the Core Model at a content strategy conference last year.

It’s an exercise that helps you to identify pages on your website where user tasks and business goals meet. These are your core pages and you should focus your efforts on improving these before other content on your site.

Core Model diagramWe use the core model exercise in our training on planning web content. So far we’ve introduced it only to those editors on the Go Mobile programme, but it’s a useful tool for anyone who looks after a website.

Elements of the core model

The core model helps you to answer a series of questions about a page on your website, and this in turn determines what content is needed on the page.

User tasks – what questions will users come to this page to answer and what tasks do they want to complete?

Business goals – what business goals drive the content on your page?

Inward paths – how will users find and access this page? Where will they start their journey?

Core content – what is the essential content you need on your page to help your users answer their questions and complete their tasks? What secondary content will help you achieve your business goals?

Foreward paths – where will users go after they’ve answered their question/completed a task on your page? Are there more business goals that you can drive them towards?

Let’s work through an example

This example is taken from the About section of the University website. It’s a page about the quality of our research.

Core Model worked example - research excellenceUser tasks

A user might come to this page to find out about the quality of research done at Newcastle and to see how we rank against other universities.

Business goals

Our goals for this page are to attract new research collaborators, partners, staff and students.

Inward paths

The inward paths to most pages on the University website will be very similar. Users might get there from a:

  • search, either on the website itself or from a search engine
  • link from elsewhere on the University website, or from a link on an external site
  • link from a publication or email

Core content

For our users to complete their task we need to provide some context for them by outlining what research we do at Newcastle and who we work with. They also need to know the headlines from our REF results so they can quickly answer the question of how our research ranks against other universities. The awards we’ve received for our research are also relevant.

Foreward paths

This is where we need to think about the onward journey of our users, and how that fits with our business goals. From the research excellence page we want visitors to go on to find out more about our:

  • impact case studies
  • societal challenge themes
  • REF results

We must make sure there are calls to action on the page that link to all these destinations. These in turn will have their own calls to action, for example from the impact case studies to job vacancies.

Have a go yourself

Now that you’ve read about the core model and how it can help you prioritise content for improvement on your website, why not have a go yourself.  You can download a core model template from our website (University login required).

Team update: 17 – 30 September

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Our Go Mobile Phase 1 sites are now live!

Go Mobile programme

We’ve now made 17 Go Mobile sites live, including the University Homepage:

Stay tuned for more updates about the next phase of the programme, coming soon.

The Undergraduate site is back in T4, Linda has been checking the import and building new grid-based landing pages to the UG Team’s specification.

Design and Technical developments

Finalising Press Office News template build to include feeds to Plasma screens, social meta data and theme based news. As part of the Go Mobile clean-up old scripts and systems that are not required by the Press Office team have been noted for removal and other systems to be kept for archive purposes only.

External homepage build is complete with news scripts and site manager connection added to the revised mobile layout.

Training and support

Emma C is busy writing our new training module – Website Media Management. This session will cover finding and editing images, best practice for documents and uploading to the T4 Media Library.

Anne’s working on some bespoke T4 CMS training for the Press Office.

We’re busy planning the next phase of training for Go Mobile. More sessions are scheduled through October-December ready for the next batch of editors.

We’ve received 29 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 17 of them.

Campaigns and web developments

Lisa has been working with the editor of the Open Day site to carry out post-event updates

We’re trialling some new software to help us monitor our position in search rankings (on desktop and mobile) for targeted keywords.

Emma B has launched a new site for the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute  and been working with her editors in APL and Law to iron out any post go-live glitches in the sites.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re now turning our attention to Phase 2, in which we plan to take the rest of the external facing website through the Go Mobile process (University login required). Phase 2 is planned to take place between January and December 2016.

The order in which we tackle sites is being prioritised by Faculty Steering Groups and central senior management. Once the order and timescale for each site is agreed, we will publish our plans on our website.

Feedback

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

Excellent Results for Postgraduate Website Testing

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We posted an article earlier this year about user testing that the Corporate Web Development team undertook on the Postgraduate (PG) website. Our testing was completed a few months after go live, last October.

Since then, as part of the final stages of the PG website project, there has been a range of extensive evaluations run and co-ordinated by the Postgraduate Marketing Team.

From clarity tests of the content, use of Google Analytics, interviews, remote user testing by our PG target audience – even an externally-run expert review.

There was also a chance to review the new website against our competitors – well it would be rude not to…and anyway we had a clear content strategy to test:

“The new Postgraduate website will have audience driven, engaging content that inspires ambitious high-flying global students to make us their confident choice for PG study”

Headline results

Overall – the new website has performed excellently, with some outstanding feedback alongside some further ideas for development.

Which is great, since the PG website project has paved the way for all our Go Mobile work!

It’s important to note once a website has been launched and tested – that’s not the end. Actually it’s just the beginning; of making further improvements, developments, finding solutions to issues and continually trying to do the best thing for our users.

Read on to find out how we did…

First impressions

The word cloud below shows first impressions of the PG site. The most popular words that users used to describe the site included: easy, modern, simple, clear, professional, clean and cool.

Word cloud showing first impressions of the PG website

Website content

“Everything is very clear, the words actually stand out because the design of the site is very lean and clean cut…There are no useless pieces of information.”

User tester

  • Ranked 1st or 2nd in comparison to competitor PG content according to Clarity Grader, a website content analysis tool
  • An improvement in quality and consistency of content
  • Users found the content clear, detailed, straightforward and organised and with good comprehension
  • Test participants commented on the quality of course entries they found. Users specifically found the following useful:
    • modules
    • course delivery and duration
    • facilities
    • employment infographics and related courses

some future developments

  • New content quality and consistency measures are being developed
  • Continued focus on the use of terminology, ensuring the content is accessible by our key audiences
  • Further development of supplementary information, scheduled by a web editorial calendar
  • Develop stronger links between supplementary information and course information

Design

“Wow, this one’s layout is different, I like it, it’s colourful, it’s not boring”

User tester

  • The design was well received in all testing
  • Gives a great first impression to users
  • Newcastle compares favourably in comparison to our competitors

some future developments

  • User experience testing helped to influence our Go Mobile template design
  • Further development of the PG homepage and the flow of information
  • Developments to the course search call to action and visibility on the homepage

Course search/funding search

“This is amazing. I came here the last time and I don’t believe I could find things so easily. This actually shows that the website has improved and this is actually a very good filtering that the website has added to its system”

User tester

  • Newcastle’s content performed well in comparison to competitor sites. One user stated they “strongly favoured the course navigation and content over Manchester”
  • New course search was well received and proved to be the most used method of finding a course in comparison to the A-Z list
  • The advanced search filters are being well used
  • Tab layout of the course information on desktop was well received
  • The new step-by-step guide was well received and recognised as providing useful information

Some future developments

  • Further development of search filters to ensure accurate and precise results
  • Development of additional tools to sort search results, eg by relevance, A-Z
  • Streamlining of the course and funding search functionality across all devices

Calls to action

  • Good to have recognisable calls to action
  • Footer calls to action are used well
  • Improvement in number of sessions resulting in the creation of a new (applicant) account

Some future developments

  • Renaming of some calls to action for consistency
  • Revising of placement of some calls to action
  • More visible course start dates and application deadline where they exist

Navigation

  • Users reported on the ease of navigation through the website
  • Use of tabs on course profile pages are well received on desktop

some future developments

  • Development of mobile menus: main menu; secondary menu; and tabbed menus
  • Consistent application of hyperlinks – already addressed as part of ongoing development
  • Review of the breadcrumbs design and functionality

Conclusion

So, has the new PG website been a measurable success? I would argue a resounding YES!

All the testing, evaluation and competitor analysis shows this is largely the case. Phew.

Back to the original plan then:

“The new Postgraduate website will have audience driven, engaging content that inspires ambitious high-flying global students to make us their confident choice for PG study”

Audience driven – Check. All content has been created, developed and designed with the user’s needs in mind.

Engaging content – Check. We’ve used new technology and design to enhance the user experience where appropriate; a mobile responsive design, new course search, infographics and videos to supplement course pages.

Ambitious high-flying global students – Time will tell. It’s hard to test or measure whether applicants are deciding to apply due to our marvellous new website. There are after all numerous other factors to influence an applicant – but still, shouldn’t we have an inspirational strategy to work to?

Find out more

If you’d like to learn more about the results of the PG user testing, and watch videos of the testing watch the Prezi online.

Read about our earlier user testing of the PG Website.