Developer & Website Marketing Strategy

Steve Mau, NYU SternChris Traganos, Evernote

Digital Strategy for websites

•Case study of redeveloping NYU’s Stern website

•Developer toolkit for approaching website strategy

•Redefine content delivery

•Forward thinking design and technical decisions

•Lessons learned throughout process

•Post launch strategy

Components of website digital strategy

•Goal setting & findings

•Team roles / agency selection

•Information architecture

•Design review process

•User experience / usability testing

•Launch

•Ongoing enhancements

stern.nyu.edu

Dec 2009Homepage:

Quick winJan 2010

Goal Setting & Findings

•Improve the ease of use

•Catch audience at various points in the lifecycle

•Make the whole online presence greater than the sum of parts

•Separate internal from external information

•Show don’t tell

•Differentiate

Findings

•Solid framework for building the site over time

•Approaching the site content with a curation focus

•Forward thinking in redesign

•Taking the online presence as an accurate representation of your brand

•Respect for smart decisions from peers

Goal Setting & Opportunities

•Polling your community and audience for feedback on form & function.

•Reviewing with your technical resources the state of the site

•Get concrete understanding of where it stands

Surveying Tools

BasecampProject Collaboration

Project Management Tools

Team Roles / Agency selection

Team Roles

•Need skilled team to deliver quality project

•Comprised of internal and external players

•Maintain stability while leveraging creative, prototyping tactics

Agency Scorecards

•Strategy

•Creative

•Process

•Technology

•Capabilities

•Fit

Agency  #1 Agency  #2 Agency  #3 Agency  #4 Agency  #5

Strategy 4.3 4.6 3.5 3.3 3.6

Crea.ve 3.6 4.6 2.6 3.1 3.7

Process 3.3 4.8 3.4 3.4 3.8

Technology 3.5 4.3 2.9 4.0 4.3

Capabili.es 3.3 4.4 3.3 4.3 4.3

Fit   2.9 5.4 3.3 2.8 3.9

Average 3.5 4.7 3.2 3.5 3.9

IAInformation Architecture

Wireframes & Sitemaps

•Focus on interactions

•Review with finetooth comb

•Pull in technical / UX pair of eyes

•Ask questions as feedback

•Think about user pathways

•Iterate until it’s production-ready

•Curating your content -thinking smart today will improve overall rebuild

•Identify areas for expansion

Jason Robb: “Tools for Sketching UX Experiences”http://bit.ly/mUG8D

Jason Robb: “Tools for Sketching UX Experiences”http://bit.ly/mUG8D

OmnigraffleJumpchart

Sitemap & Wireframe tools

Design Review Process

GroupThink

•Solicit honest external feedback

•GroupThink can prevent critical improvements

•Practical design and a great user interaction is the goal

User Experience / Usability Testing

User Experience

•Create funnels and determine pathways through the site

•Create utility for users coming to your site

•Collect and decide on addressing major feedback items

•Capture screen activity

•Video the tester’s face

•Record the tester’s voice

•Add chapter markers on-the-fly

•Control recording with the remote

•Export to Quicktime

Feedback Tool: Silverback App

Launch Plan

Build

•Keep track of code status

•Decide on deliverable dates

•Review each stage and the progress made

Hostedcode repository

Commit logsadded to project

beanstalk basecamp

“Tape the Edges”

•Approach launch like painting a room - prep counts before & after

•List of redirects for .htaccess file

•Helpful 404 page

•Link checker

•Test page load

tools.pingdom.com

CDNContent Delivery Networks

Make fewer HTTP requests and spread them out.

S3 & Cloudfront (Backup CDN)

Dynamic Video Streaming

Ongoing maintenance & future enhancements

Mindset

•Continuous improvement

•Plan out stage 2

•Address all aspects of your site - craft the experience

•Soft launches are great - take time to get it right

FurtherReading

DateType of IssueReported byWhereFeature Request / ProblemSeverity

Support Form

Thank you.@stevenmau @ctraganos