When  design  &  functionality  are  not  enough      Presented  by:    Teodora  Dotzeva,  Web  Manager,  Vancouver  Community  College    Presented  at:    #PSEWEB  2014  -­‐  Canada's  University  and  College  Digital  Marketing  Conference      PRESENTATION  NOTES:    

1. FACTS:    ! 3  continents  (Europe,  Australia  and  North  America)  ! >  9,000  -­‐  website  with  over  9,000  pages  and  content  items  ! 26%  -­‐  visits  to  the  home  page  went  up  by  $26%  year  over  year  ! 4  in-­‐house  developers    ! 7  weeks  to  implement  

   

2. OBJECTIVES:    ! Rebrand  –  new  logo  and  new  marketing  campaign  

 ! Single  Content  Management  System  (CMS)  to  support  VCC.ca,  department  

websites  and  my.VCC.ca  (college  Intranet).  Have  the  ability  to  re-­‐use  content  across  different  channels  (VCC.ca  and  my.VCC.ca).  Easy  to  use  system  that  integrates  with  Active  Directory  and  college  databases.    

! Increase  enrolment  by  simplifying  information,  improving  the  presentation  of  information  and  improving  navigation  to  reduce  number  of  clicks.  Responsive  website  to  support  clean  delivery  of  information  on  different  platforms  with  improved  accessibility.  Increase  enrolment  by  bringing  more  people  to  the  door.      

3. THE  PROCESS  &  TIMELINE:    Accelerated  timeline  because  of  staffing/leadership  changes.  Project  had  a  

delayed  start,  but  the  deadline  didn’t  move  because  there  was  an  expectation.    ! Procurement  of  CMS  in  Fall  2012  –  lengthy  process.  We  had  to  outline  CMS  

requirements  needed  to  support  multiple  channels  (external  college  website,  college  Intranet  and  department  website/extranet).  We  had  consultation  with  potential  users  to  ensure  they  can  easily  use  the  CMS.  

 ! Design  –  new  VCC  logo  finalized  in  Jan.  2013  and  brand  colours  finalized  in  

Feb.  –  website  design  begins  last  week  of  Jan.    

! Consultation  in  Feb.  with  faculty,  staff,  Registrar’s  Office,  leadership,  students  and  prospective  students.    

! VCC.ca  discovery  and  functional  specifications  in  March  ! (homepage,  news,  events,  program  pages,  inside  static  pages)  –  focused  on  

desktop  version  but  also  needed  to  produce  tablet  and  mobile  versions  in  a  few  days.      

 ! Design  cut-­‐ups  and  CSS  in  April  (done  in  Europe  by  CMS  provider)  

 ! 4-­‐day  in-­‐house  training  in  May.  The  training  included  3  days  of  developer  

training,  ½  day  of  contributor  training  and  ½  day  of  ‘train  the  trainer’  training.  This  provided  us  with  the  ability  to  develop  content  templates,  set  up  workflows,  navigate  through  the  content  and  numerous  other  necessary  CMS  skills.  Best  of  all,  some  of  our  contributors  attended  the  contributor  training  and  within  a  couple  of  weeks  they  were  able  to  begin  adding  content.  

 ! Implementation  –  (in  7  weeks  we  launched  a  responsive  website  with  over  

9,000  pages).  Over  the  years  we  had  developed  several  online  applications  to  manage  and  maintain  content.  This  meant  that  with  the  new  CMS  we  had  to  migrate  content,  create  workflows  and  sync  CMS  fields  with  several  database  tables.  

 ! The  VCC  web  team  did  website  testing  in  July.  We  also  involved  program  

advisors  and  the  Registrar’s  Office  because  they  were  most  familiar  with  the  old  website  and  could  identify  missing  information.  These  were  also  the  people  who  would  deal  with  prospective  students  the  most  and  therefore  need  to  know  how  to  navigate  the  website  in  order  to  find  or  help  others  find  the  information  they  need.    

 ! Go  live  -­‐  July  18,  2013.    

   

4. WHAT  CMS  &  WHY?  –  TerminalFour’s  Site  Manager  (http://www.terminalfour.com)      ! Usability,  all  users  who  were  part  of  the  consultation  process  during  

procurement  really  liked  the  product.  After  1  year  of  use  we  are  still  happy  with  our  choice.  It  produces  clean  code  that  integrates  with  a  style  sheet  specific  to  our  website.    

! Great  training.      

! Easy  to  learn  and  use  –  important  for  contributors  and  for  those  who  manage  the  CMS.    

! Reliable  team  and  support.  Project  management  was  done  from  Australia,  design  cut-­‐ups  and  CSS  files  were  developed  in  Europe,  functional  specifications  were  created  in  North  America.  All  deliverables  were  given  to  us  on  time.      

! Good  integration  with  Active  Directory  and  Oracle  databases  We  also  query  Banner  database  to  get  time,  location  and  price  about  course  sections.    

! Server  independence  and  site  reliability.  The  CMS  architecture  allows  separating  the  CMS  and  the  production  server  so  that  the  live  site  will  only  have  HTML  documents.  This  means  that  pages  are  generated  by  the  CMS  by  connecting  to  the  databases  but  once  the  site  is  live  we  are  completely  independent  of  any  database  outages.  The  live  server  can  be  as  simple  as  an  ISS  server.  CMS  administrators  can  push  content  out  as  often  as  they  want.  We  scheduled  regular  automatic  content  publishing  and  transfer  of  the  website  so  that  our  moderators  and  contributors  can  be  self-­‐sufficient  and  independent  of  the  CMS  administrators.    

! We  have  the  ability  to  schedule  reports  to  check  accessibility  and  broken  links.  Site  Manager  takes  care  of  broken  links.  

   

5. THE  WEBSITE:    Before  -­‐  The  website  was  very  text  heavy  and  multiple  clicks  were  required  to  get  to  important  information.  We  had  to  maintain  a  separate  mobile  website  so  there  was  a  duplication  of  effort.      After  –  We  implemented  mega  navigation  menus  that  make  searching  for  content  simpler  and  faster.  We  have  a  better  search  (Google  and  program/course  specific  search).  The  design  is  colourful  with  big  icons.  Icons  are  

used  consistently  across  all  pages  on  the  website.  We  deployed  a  responsive  website  so  we  would  no  longer  have  maintain  a  mobile  site  in  addition  to  the  main  site.  Based  on  Google  and  CrazyEgg  analytics  as  well  as  user  feedback  we  identified  important  information  and  made  it  more  prominent.  For  example,  on  program  pages  we  have  start,  length,  credential,  campus  and  part  or  full-­‐time  delivery  more  prominent  as  this  is  what  our  users  need  to  make  a  decision.  We  also  broke-­‐down  the  page  into  smaller  components  so  that  users  can  either  view  the  full  page  or  just  view  specific  sections  they  are  interested  in.        

6. BOTTOM  LINE:      

! Process  to  develop  the  website  involved  a  lot  of  consultation  with  faculty,  students,  admissions,  etc.  Needed  to  consider  people  with  visual  impairment  as  well  as  responsive  design.  VCC  employees  are  happy  with  the  website  because  they  were  involved  in  the  development  process  and  have  a  vested  interest  in  it.    

! The  new  website  was  part  of  a  comprehensive  marketing  plan:  we  redesigned  our  advertising  to  make  the  URL  a  dominant  graphical  feature;  we  placed  ads  on  public  transit,  movie  theatres,  online,  print,  etc.;  the  ads  directed  people  to  a  beautiful,  vibrant  website;  and  we  changed  the  focus  of  our  web  site  so  that  it  became  the  College’s  primary  marketing  tool.  (See  examples  of  VCC.ca  campaign)    

! The  result:  Visits  to  the  home  page  went  up  by  $26%  year  over  year;  and  the  College  had  a  significant  increase  in  inquiries  through  the  web  from  potential  students.  We  won  prestigious  awards.  

   

7. PLATINUM  &  GOLD:    

MarCom  is  an  international  creative  competition  that  recognizes  outstanding  achievement  by  marketing  and  communications  professionals.      For  2013,  over  6,500  entries  were  submitted  from  across  the  US,  Canada  and  several  other  countries.  In  the  competition  were  everything  from  individual  communicators  to  media  conglomerates  to  Fortune  500  companies.      PLATINUM  for  the:      Go  Ahead.  Get  Skilled.    Ad  campaign        

GOLD  The  Gold  award  is  presented  to  those  entries  judged  to  exceed  the  high  standards  of  the  industry  norm.      VCC  won  gold  for:      VCC.ca  website  redesign      Go  ahead.  Get  skilled.  (transit  campaign)    But  no  improvement  in  enrolment.      

 8. WHAT  WE  LEARNED:  

 A  new  website  is  not  the  answer  to  everything.    We  saw  an  increase  in  inquiries  but  no  increase  in  enrolment.    So  what  happened?  The  website  exposed  our  resource  limitations  and  process  inefficiencies.  As  a  result,  we  have  increased  collaboration  with  other  departments  within  the  college  to  strengthen  our  recruitment  process  and  improve  customer  service.      We  are  also  constantly  improving  internal  processes  and  website  content  to  simplify  program  information  and  enhance  prospects’  ability  for  self-­‐service.      With  the  right  team,  anything  is  possible  despite  very  ambitious  deadlines.  With  4  in-­‐house  web  developers,  we  needed  all  the  help  we  could  get.  We  trained  our  marketing  team  so  within  a  few  hours  we  had  all  hands  on  deck.  It  was  definitely  a  team  effort  and  TerminalFour  was  crucial  in  the  success  of  the  project.  They  were  involved  in  many  stages  and  always  delivered  on  time.      Remember  to  laugh  and  work  with  others  to  solve  problems.  We  worked  many  long  hours  during  the  last  month  before  the  launch,  but  the  best  thing  about  it  all  is  that  we  came  out  a  stronger  team  at  the  end  and  we  can  still  laugh  together.  

             

9. WHAT  IS  NEXT:    

! Complete  all  marketing  pages  and  strengthen  marketing  campaign.    

! Finish  the  migration  of  department  websites  to  use  new  CMS  and  new  brand.  

 ! In  September  2014  we  will  begin  the  implementation  of  my.VCC.ca  

(VCC’s  Intranet  for  students,  alumni  and  employees)      Was  the  project  a  success  –  well,  I  would  like  to  let  you  be  the  judge  of  that.