Website Redesign Pitfalls
10:30 AM – 11:15 AM
Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Redesign or Redevelop?
Redesign if just asked, old, boring
Redevelop if code is poor, usability poor, hard to update
Redesign is cheap (director won’t know difference)
Redevelop is $$$ more like triplebypass
Get off the major redesign cycle. Disruptive to users
Users dislike redesigns
Redesign w/ evidence based
Usability tests, usage logs, feedback show a need
Pitfall 1: not accounting time for assessment
Redesign where the biggest ROI in terms of content, services
Look where people are going
Google Analytics
Clicky
Usability studies
Find and document page rank
Plan for time to get consensus:
Need for change
Desired outcomes
Data is good here
Pitfall: death by committee
Make committee SMALL
Data+evidence based practice
Pitfall: being experts
Don’t design to make librarians happy, design for your users
Pitfall: thinking outside box
Cms
Blog
Wiki
Rather traditional page based
Pitfall spending too much time designing
Why be original when so many choices already?
spend time on content, services rather than arguing design minutia
Pitfall only looking other Library websites
User expectations formed on other sites, not libs
Pitfall use SMART goals
Increase page rank, improve content update times, improve usability x percent, increase in resource usage
Pitfall: not communicating enough
Consider blog or wiki, tool manage user expectations
Execution
Pitfall communicating too much
Redesign by committee
Look to evidence to avoid tedious discussions
Pitfall not providing clear path for users
Define primary functions and these paths are clear
Connecting people / materials get prime real estate
Pitfall reinventing the wheel
Use free stuff
Spent time money on remarkable content, engagement
Librarians are smart provide good content
Remarkable content is rewritten content for the web don’t cut and paste
Improvements in usability in hundreds of percent
Redesign for SEO
Structure HTML well consistently
Simple URL
Alt tags
Descriptive titles
Submit sitemap
Ask Google to remove old from cache
Design with social media optimization
Don’t throw old content
Update robots.txt
Pitfall not planning for maintenance in future
Do it right once
Others who took better notes include:
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Comments (4)
Matt, these are really good points that I think could also guide the redesign of programs, spaces and other experiences. A key thought that comes out of this is perhaps borrow in order to reinvent.
Tony
Matt, these are really good points that I think could also guide the redesign of programs, spaces and other experiences. A key thought that comes out of this is perhaps borrow in order to reinvent.
Tony
Matt, these are really good points that I think could also guide the redesign of programs, spaces and other experiences. A key thought that comes out of this is perhaps borrow in order to reinvent.
Tony
Matt, these are really good points that I think could also guide the redesign of programs, spaces and other experiences. A key thought that comes out of this is perhaps borrow in order to reinvent.
Tony