Redesigning Your Website

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Redesigning Your Website

• Will Redway Idea Guy
• Matt Toy Realism Guy

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Heres what weve learned from building a few
hundred websites

• Front End Web Sites are too big
• Schools dont commit enough to fresh content
• The Web isnt fully integrated into a schools
  communication plan
• Pretty web sites dont succeed on their own
• The Public Web and the Private web dont talk to
  each other
• Web sites decisions should be based on
  communication priorities not technology ones.
• Great Content makes Great Web sites

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Who is your site for?
WWW. YOURSCHOOL.ORG Designed to inform those
who dont know you well. (Prospective Parents
and Students) 20 or less of your site traffic
WWW. MY.SCHOOL.ORG Designed to deliver custom
content to those you know well 80 of site
traffic PORTAL AND GROUP SOFTWARE
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Starting Points for Building a Good Web

• Bite off only what you can chew
• The leadership of the school has assessed the
  schools core communication goals and has made
  the web a priority to achieve them.
• The School understands that the web is a
  communication device and that content decisions
  should be from the people who need to communicate
  with the web, not run it.
• School has committed to the personnel resources
  to create quality content for core audiences
• School has committed to continually improve the
  web by measuring its successes and failures.

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Making Your Front End Web Site Smaller

• Smaller is better? Thats not what I heard..
• Need to reevaluate what goes on the front vs.
  what will be in the portal.
• Resist the temptation to put it in both
  placesTOWER HILL POMFRET FAIRFIELD COUNTRY DAY

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Sample Redesigned Site Navigation

• Pre k -8
• Pre k -12
• 9-12
• We have handouts

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Ok. Now weve taken a few pounds off. Lets see
if we can tone the muscle

• GOOD EXAMPLES OF REDESIGNS
• Woodberry Forest
• Gould Academy
• Pomfret School
• Kingswood-Oxford School (Webcasts Student
  Blogs)
• New Hampton School (Recode)
• Proctor Academy (HP/Admissions/Campus Map/Chucks
  Corner)

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Filling the Portal

• Take content off the front that used to be for
  parents and alums and put it in the portal.
• Examples Tower Hill. Windward School, Fairfield
  Country Day, BC High

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How Do I Begin?

• Step 1 Upgrade to Podium
• Step 2 Recode your existing site on Pagebuilder
  OR Redesign your site on Pagebuilder.
• How do I know which ones for me?
• Fill this out.

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How Should I Do this?

• Step 1
• Podium Upgrade
• WhippleHill will add Podium Portal and Content
  Management System to the existing school Site.
  This will not change the front end of the
  schools existing site, but will change the way
  in which the site content is managed. During
  this upgrade process a WhippleHill Project Lead
  will train Chestnut Hill users.
• Cost 0
• Time 4-6 weeks, we could begin October 1, 2007
• Step 2
• Option 1
• Recode of Existing Site
• WhippleHill will recode the existing Chestnut
  Hill site, with no significant design changes,
  onto Page Builder software allowing CHA complete
  control over site content.
• Cost approximately 15,000
• Time 8-12 weeks, unless there is a need to
  widen existing site, then add 2 weeks.
• 
  
  
• Option 2
• Complete Redesign of Existing Site
• Working with a WhippleHill Project Lead and
  Designer, CHA and WhippleHill will collaborate on
  a completely new website design using Podium and
  Page Builder tools.
• Cost/Time Size and Scope of project to be
  outlined through a Scope of Work document.
  Similar projects generally fall into the
  22,000-27,500 range.

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Tweak vs. Recode vs. Redesign

• Do you think youd like to start from scratch or
  tweak what you have?
• Are you on Podium?
• Are you in/are you going to be in a branding
  exercise?
• Is your leadership on board to use the portal to
  communicate with parents?

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How much?

• Upgrade to Podium 0
• Recode your Existing Site to PageBuilder (No
  creative time/All prgramming time) 125 175
  hours _at_ 115 per hour
• Redesign Your site from Scratch 200 hours
• Cheap Yankee would tell you to start from
  scratch.