Before coming to Blackbaud in 2004, I spent many moons on the interactive design/information architecture/user experience/visual communication side of the world. So while I’ve been immersed enough in the technical bits & bytes to grok about it — my interest and passion has always been with the human rods & cones side of things.
A major focus when we started building our Blackbaud Interactive group was to provide a comprehensive set of design services. This meant bringing in a lot of talented designers with experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit world. I’m proud to say that we now have one of the largest and most experienced interactive design teams serving the nonprofit industry operating from both our Charleston and London offices.
Blackbaud Interactive recently began work on its 100th complete website redesign project built on NetCommunity. What started out as a new part of our overall online design services has grown dramatically. The team does a variety of redesign strategy, information architecture, usability testing, content analysis, creative concept and styleguide design, and other services for our clients. I thought I would share some important lessons learned to help organizations about to undertake any website redesign project.
Don’t Accept Blind Designs: There is still a practice of design shops offering to do “blind design” or “speculative design” in an attempt to earn a client’s business. This usually involves a design shop taking some thrown together or recycled designs and presenting them as part of their RFP or proposal. There might be some initial “ohs” and “ahs” but these fade once discussions start about a client’s goals, objectives, brand, etc. Good creative work never happens in a vacuum. Good creative work takes careful analysis, two-way discussion, and uses a proven process that brings the best ideas to the surface.
Don’t Design by Committee: A camel is a horse that has been designed by a committee. Committees often destroy the creative process because more minds don’t necessarily mean more great ideas. Groups of people have the tendency to pile on so many extras that the original concept collapses under its own weight. Getting buy-in from various stakeholders is important, but our experience has shown that making a single individual or small group responsible for approving creative concepts is the best approach.
Don’t Fall Prey to the NASCAR Effect: The homepage of a website is one of the most important parts of any online presence. And everyone wants to have their program featured front-and-center. This explains why the main page of so many sites resemble the front quarter panel of a stockcar. Lots of graphics, icons, links, sections, callouts, and content in a small space — all fighting for eyeball attention. If everything is important, then nothing appears important. Not to mention that their are actually some heuristics around how much is too much and what is usually just right.
Don’t Move All of Your Old Stuff: If you bought a brand new house, then you probably wouldn’t you just move all your old stuff in without doing some clean-up. Otherwise you end up with a great new place that quickly starts looking just like your old digs before too long. A site redesign offers a great opportunity to go through all of your content, images, etc. and give them all a good scrub down. In addition to any new information architecture or content analysis activities there should be some content cleansing. A good rule of thumb is updating or dropping any non-historical content that hasn’t been updated in eight months. Also check the website traffic logs for least visited pages that might need to be revived or retired.
Don’t Launch without a Soft Launch: Sadly, I’ve seen it too many times. After months of redesigning a brand new site comes the big public unveiling and within minutes someone finds a typo or a broken link or something worse. This usually happens because there wasn’t a soft launch of the website to certain key insiders and a select group of external constituents. Get a fresh set of eyes on the site before launching it to the rest of the world. Even the best designers and content authors develop a certain amount of “tunnel vision” from staring at the same pages for too long. They practice the coin toss for the Super Bowl. You should practice the launch of your website.
These are just some of the key pitfalls to avoid when launching your newly designed online presence. The website you save might be your own.