Preparing for Content Management

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Preparing for Content Management

• Cynthia Ross Pedersen
• Adeo Communications Corporation

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Innovative Thinking. Expert Delivery.

• Web development firm since 1995
• Headquarters in Toronto, ON Canada
• eBusiness focused
• Build multi-lingual Web sites, intranets and
  extranets
• Recognized authority on user centric designs
• Work with large scale, bricks-based organizations

• Services include
• Strategy
• Site Application Development
• Tool Vendor Selection
• Content Development
• Internet Marketing
• Usability Testing
• Site Reviews
• Metrics

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Todays session

• Premise
• You bought a package
• The quickstep migration process took your bad web
  site and stuck it into the content management
  tool
• Now you can manage your bad web site with a tool
• Goal
• Maximize the effectiveness of your new content
  management tool

• Agenda
• Highlight steps in the implementation process
  where key decisions are made that impact the
  effectives of CM
• Techniques that help your contributors evaluate
  their sites in preparation for a migration
• Build the roadmap that takes you from here to
  success

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Current Business Challenges for Web Sites

• Content Challenges
• Reliable and current content
• User relevant and targeted content
• Consistent and intuitive navigation
• Consistent design
• Presentation that supports access to and
  comprehension of content
• Flexible architecture to allow for growth

• Maintenance Challenges
• Make it easy to publish on a timely basis
• Eliminate the Web Master Bottleneck and empower
  subject matter experts
• Reduce the amount of technical knowledge required
  for publishing
• Automate current manual processes, such as
  automatic page publishing or expiry
• Be able to publish and access the type of
  information that is needed

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Content management tools

• Promise of CM
• Empower publishers of content
• Make it easy to keep content up to date
• Standardize the look feel, control the
  navigation
• Add workflow to ease publishing and add controls
• Automate many routine processes
• Provide users one stop access to everything they
  needed in a personalized way

• Types of CM tools
• Publishing
• Document management
• Portals
• Collaborative
• CRM
• Knowledge management
• Others DAM, Ecommerce

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Making the process effective
Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Making the process effective

• Do
• Understand your business requirements (content,
  sites, publishing process, skill of your
  publishers, skill of your CM support team)
• Get the right people involved on the vendor side
  and client side. Involve your most knowledgeable
  contributors
• Understand what the tool will and will not do for
  your content
• Start the site clean up process
• Caution
• Dont get lost in the wow features of the tool
• Make sure the voice of the publishers are heard
• The experience is different for new sites
  existing sites

Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Making the process effective

• Do
• Focus on the templates understanding them as
  content containers for an end consumer go
  beyond the tool to the information being served
  up
• Apply usability to optimize the publishing
  process and the final product
• Apply best practices of web writing to hard
  coded elements
• Get the right people involved 9vendor, client
  side), use your most knowledgeable contributors
• Caution
• Dont start with the home page
• Dont focus exclusively on navigation
• Dont get lost in the technical workings of the
  tool

Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Making the process effective

• Do
• Establish the goals of the pilot (to learn how to
  use it, to test the tool, to see the results of
  the process)
• Migrate a good site OR fix the architecture and
  content of an existing site then migrate it OR
  produce new site
• Use both keen and typical publishers
• Caution
• Acknowledge the goals of the pilot ( differing
  sets of learning)
• Dont ignore the results of the pilot make the
  fixes
• A quick launch is not a pilot its just quick

Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Making the process effective

• Do
• Provide training on tool, how to create good
  sites (strategic content, architecture, web
  writing)
• Provide assistance and tools to plan sites and
  evaluate existing sites, techniques for
  migration
• Use the learning from the pilot to develop
  training and support materials (including
  standards guidelines)
• Caution
• Dont migrate what you have unless you know its
  good
• Provide support for more than the technical
  aspects of publishing

Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Making the process effective

• Whats next?
• Explore what content works and what doesnt
• Usability tests on the site
• Use satisfaction ratings surveys
• Analyze the site metrics
• Check back with publishers
• Tweak the templates, processes or support
• Establish a users group to solve issues promote
  best practices
• Evaluate upgrades for the tool or add-on
  functionality
• Apply the tool your processes elsewhere
• Caution
• Turnover of publishers be prepared

Tool selection
Tool implementation
Pilot project
Building migrating
Post launch
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Deep dive on a couple of elements

• Templates
• Making content web ready

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Deep Dive on Templates

• Most sites require a wide selection of templates
• Enough for options to fit types layouts of
  content
• Not so many as to cause confusion
• Focus on descriptive names
• Be clear on the use of each template for best
  overall results
• Templates for your types of content
• Web wireless
• Word docs (press releases, product kits,
  policies)
• PDFs
• Emails

• Templates enforce standards
• Branding user interface elements
• Font size and styles
• Paragraph or page size styles
• Titles tags
• Versions (language, platform, audience, uses)
• Opportunity to standardize presentation across
  the organization

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Tips for content owners Making your content web
ready

• New site
• Understand the headset and the approach
• Determine audience, content
• Inventory what you have what you need
• Develop site architecture
• Develop content plan
• Assign roles responsibilities
• Gather content, clean up your inventory rewrite
  as necessary

• Consider
• Develop and apply naming conventions (clear,
  structured)
• Lifecycle of content/workflow
• De-silo content and applications

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Tips for content owners Making your content web
ready

• Existing site
• Reaffirm your audience and content
• Review user feedback metrics
• Audit your site content (grade, organize)
• Develop revised site architecture
• Develop content migration plan
• Identify content lifecycle workflow
• Refine roles responsibilities
• Clean up content, gather new content, rewrite as
  necessary
• Refine Naming conventions (clear, structured)

• Consider
• New ways to present content
• De-silo (shared content is easier through the
  tool)

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Top 5

• Have the right resources on the job
• Focus on the publishers, give them the tools they
  need
• Understand the content and focus on the words
• Isolate tests of the tool from tests of the
  content
• A quick launch is only that

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Questions?

• Cynthia Ross Pedersen (cindyrp_at_adeo.com)
• Adeo Communications Corporation
• www.adeo.com