Planning and designing a web presence (Part 1) MGMT 230 Week 3

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1 Planning and designing a web presence (Part 1) MGMT 230 Week 3

2 After today s class you will understand.. The main steps in the website planning and development process How to identify goals for a particular organizational website How the motivations of website visitors can be included in site design How to design the underlying structure of a web site How to use today s material for the website project assignment

3 Developing an effective web presence Web presence is a key part of online marketing - the most important element of a firm s owned media Build your site to work well on any device (responsive design) Often the only touch point with a customer very influential in terms of brand perception Must be effective for the customer deliver what they want relevance and value

4 Ways to get a web site built Build and code from scratch bespoke development (HTML, CSS, databases, ecommerce functionality etc) Wide range of firms offer services of varying expense, sophistication, and levels of expertise (the sky is the limit) Use a content management system (CMS) as the foundation for the site Wordpress (it is said that Wordpress powers 23% of the web); Joomla, Drupal etc Template-based sites Squarespace, Weebly, Wix etc. Aimed at small business with little or no technical expertise. Disadvantage is that the site is not usually exportable for hosting elsewhere (proprietary systems) & there is very limited customization

5 WEB PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

6 Web project assignment Stage 1 of this assignment is the production of a planning document (worth 20%) Due by: Monday, November 5th at 4:30pm via Stage 2 is the production of the site itself using WordPress (worth 15%) Due by Friday November 30th at 4:30pm (via ) Before you develop your website, you need to PLAN Assignment instructions, some samples and the marking scheme are on the course website

7 PART 1 WEBSITE PLANNING AND DESIGN DOCUMENTATION Sections of your plan SECTION 1: Goals, target audience, business model, and competitors SECTION 2: Information architecture, page layout etc SECTION 3: Design look and feel and usability SECTION 4: Site content - images, video, search engine optimization

8 THE MOBILE FIRST WEB

9 The importance of a mobile-first strategy for website design Increasing shift to mobile access of websites Google announced it would penalize non mobile-friendly websites in mobile search results(april 2015) In October 2016 Google announced it would split its mobile and desktop index with the mobile index being the primary and most upto-date version Try the Mobile-friendly Test

10 Responsive design Responsive design is an approach to web page creation that makes use of flexible layouts, flexible images and cascading style sheet media queries. The goal of responsive design is to build web pages that detect the visitor's screen size and orientation and change the layout accordingly.

11 The process of designing and building an ecommerce site The Responsive Web Design Process (Cuker, 2013)

12 WEB DEVELOPMENT STAGES AND ACTIVITIES

13 Web development workflow: Discovery (define the project) Plan Build and improve Launch and evaluate Design and develop the website structure Plan Create content and build site Build and integrate content Design the visual interface Plan Goto & Cotler Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2005) New Riders

14 Another way of looking at the elements of the web design process

15 Typical roles involved in a web Site sponsor / site owner project Project manager (balances budget, time, scope) Art director/visual designer Information architect / designer / usability engineer HTML & CSS developer Programmer / backend engineer / DBA QA (Quality Assurance) Content manager / copywriter Goto & Cotler Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2005) New Riders

16 PLANNING A WEB SITE: DEFINE THE PROJECT AND SET GOALS

17 Steps in planning an effective web presence (this relates to section 1 of the assignment instructions) 1. Determine business objectives, site goals, and success factors 2. Identify the target audience and create user profiles of audience members 3. Conduct market research and competitive analysis 4. Design the site for audience, functionality, and usability

18 Setting organizational and user goals Goals from the organizational perspective Goals from the user perspective: what do they want to do on your site? SMART GOALS (see article on course website) Specific Measureable Achievable Realistic / relevant Timebound Commissioning a Business Website - How to produce a Design Brief Paul Boag

19 Setting website goals What do you want site visitors to do? Business objectives Site objectives Success criteria Why does your web site exist? What functions and content will your site provide? Design your site to achieve these

20 Identifying the purpose of a web presence for an organization what is the website actually *for*? Some examples: Provide product or service information to generate sales leads (eg. A realtor) Sell a product online Increase brand recognition Provide help, operational instructions, or customer support Shift customers toward self service (eg. online banking) Allow people to make bookings online

21 User oriented design: Motivations and Goals of Web Site Visitors why are they there? to learn about products or services to buy the products or services to obtain information to obtain contact information for a person or department in the organization to interact with other users to search for something in particular to browse to be entertained When you set the goals for a site, think about what people want and why they are there

22 Success criteria Be specific! a 25% increase in newsletter signup by 31 st December dinner reservations booked via the online form in October ,000 software downloads at the promotional price during Q a 5% increase in visitor time spent on the product feature page by 30 th September 2015 Conversion rate (see next slide)

23 Conversion rate Conversion rate: keeping track of the percentage of your web site visitors that take a desired action. For example: registering on your site customizing your site booking an appointment making a purchase Conversion rate calculation: Number of purchases divided by number of site visitors a site that had 1000 visitors who made 50 purchases has a conversion rate of 5%. A success criteria would be to increase your conversion rate Conversely for an ecommerce site a goal might be to decrease the rate of shopping cart abandonment

24 Understanding the audience Market research Demographic and psychographic information Create a detailed profile for each visitor type (a persona) and do early user testing Commissioning a Business Website - Know your audience Paul Boag Goto & Cotler Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2005) New Riders

25 An example of a detailed user profile Sample of a user profile make your site user a real person and describe his/her actual use of the site Example: online store for yoga gear Jenny is a 22 year old female university student from Victoria, who accesses the web on a daily basis from her iphone and from her laptop. She is extremely internet savvy and completes online transactions for clothes, music etc on a regular basis. She has high speed internet access both at home and on campus. Typical tasks on the site include browsing for products to purchase, reading and posting reviews, and checking the forums for information about what s new in yoga. She has a username and password and is able to complete purchases quickly and easily.

26 Aims of design for usability 1. Understand user s goals 2. Make it easy to accomplish them a way to meet the goals must be reflected in the design of the web pages themselves

27 DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING WEBSITE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

28 Designing the structure of the site Developing the Site Structure phase answers specific questions How is the overall structure organized? What exactly goes on each page? How do the pages work with one another? One of the most challenging and time consuming aspects of web development If visual design is done without this step may result in inefficient use of design resources Graphical and programming changes take longer than wireframe and blueprint changes

29 Site maps and wireframes Site map: A visual representation of a site s structure, organization, flow, and grouping of content Shows an overview of the site structure as a whole and how the pages link together Wireframe / blueprint: Show All major page structural elements Image and media placement and sizes (in pixels) Navigation elements Functional elements (forms, buttons, interaction etc) Messaging / content areas Does not typically include visual design elements

30 Content - the WHAT of the site What are the products, information, services etc? The call to action : promotional and communications messages what do you want people to do? How do you convey your message? Text, images, sound, and video Widgets for content from 3 rd party sites (eg. twitter) Embeds for video, Slideshare etc Content type: differentiate between time sensitive information versus evergreen information

31 User-generated content User Generated Content (UGC) engenders strong community - encourages stickiness and loyalty Community can create attractive content (ie. free content for the site owner) Web communities can make the user feel that they are valued by the firm Community can satisfy needs not otherwise able to be satisfied individually (eg. finding people, getting tech support) Common tools are reviews, support forums, knowledge sharing

32 Exercise on setting goals for a website You will need to do this for your web site project This exercise will give you some practice Remember the goals you set MUST be able to be achieved via the website Goal =>> =>> website design feature / content / functionality

The online customer experience: researching and planning a web presence MBA 563 WEEK 5

The online customer experience: researching and planning a web presence MBA 563 WEEK 5 After today s class you will understand.. The main steps in the website planning and development process How to identify