CIL Morning Session: Website Redesign Pitfalls
“Cut-and-paste should die, probably.”
-Jeff Wisniewski
When is the right time to re-do your website? Is the “dramatic overhaul” method actually detrimental to your site’s usability? Presenter Jeff Wisniewski seems to think so. Take a look at an overview of some of the most common mistakes made by library websites and web designers. It’s important to pay close attention to what gives your site value, so as not to harm the goodwill your design has already made.
I think Wisniewski makes a great point to treat the site evaluation and redesign process as an organic, transparent activity, making sure to include stakeholders both on staff and in the user base. Doing so makes sure that you haven’t overlooked anything and builds support in the long run.
Raw notes after the jump.
Website Redesign Pitfalls
Jeff Wisniewski
Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
has never worked on a submarine
Redesigning your website? These are the things you don’t. want. to. do.
Addressing the concept of redesign in general
Don’t look at it in the form of major disruptive redesigns every few years
Evolve/retune/
You may ask yourself: Do you really need a redesign?
Bad reasons:
“It’s been a few years”
“The boss says I have to”
“I’m bored with the site”
Good reasons:
Navigation is dysfunctional
Site doesn’t scale
Site is difficult to update
Code is too slick
Poor usability
Not performing based on goals/objectives
Redevelop v. redesign
Rejigger navigation under the hood w/o redoing front end
“Cosmetic surgery” – preserve navigation, but reskin
Prime example: Amazon 10 years ago v. Amazon now – very similar in appearance
What needs to be fixed in our website?
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island nature of features (annotations, booklists, resource guides)
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Focus on findability over anything else
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Action-oriented resources, over resource lists
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Jaret M. Spool – “The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch”
Redesign and the 5 Stages of User Grief
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Why did you change the site? It was fine as it was.
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This site is useless. What were you thinking?
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Just go back to one feature and we’ll be fine
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I don’t know what I’m going to do with the site like this.
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Okay. Fine. I don’t like, but I guess I can use it.
So why do we do this? Why do we put ourselves (and our users) through this issue every so often?
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“We’re gonna fix this, but we’re waiting for the redesign.”
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“We’re aware of this. It’s a known issue.” (Why build it all at once?)
Inverse relationship of user/designer satisfaction:
The longer a user has to get familiar with a site, the fonder they grow.
The longer a designer has to look at their site, the more dissatisfied they grow.
PITFALL: Must provide enough time for people to do this. Use this to determine what’s needed for the redesign.
“Spend your money where the water is”
Build the redesign around most commonly used features
Be mindful of Google PageRank
PITFALL: Proceeding w/o consensus – build buyin where necessary.
Avoid death by committee, natch
Small groups
PITFALL: Being the expert
Designing to satisfy librarians, rather than end-users
(These – surprisingly enough – don’t always mesh)
Aquabrowser as main example of this
Is a traditional page-based site the proper route?
Don’t let the design monopolize your time
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bring the content/services to the forefront
(see the templates used on the slides)
Don’t just look at other library sites
Remember: your site isn’t the only place people spend their time
Remember the SMART goal-making process
example: Use wiki to reduce the amount of time content takes to go live on a site from 6 days to 1 day.
PITFALL: Failing to communicate enough
Be transparent with redesign changes
Open up the process and treat it as a conversation
ex: Cook Library website redesign blog
PITFALL: Communicating too much
Example: Queens Library
connecting people with materials is a high priority
Spend time money and effort
remarkable content
engagement tools
user testing
“Cut and paste should die, probably”
Invest time for rewriting content
SEO a priority
Title and heading tags are your friends
Submit sitemap to google (Does Google have a mobile directory)
Finding decent design is easy; creating decent content is harder
PITFALL: Moving/eliminating content that’s being used
Take time to update analytics definitions
Start with a fresh content strategy
Develop a maintenance strategy
Slides posted at CIL site