Website redesign tips for a college?
March 17, 2006 6:32 PM Subscribe
What is the process for redesigning a website? More specific: a higher-ed institution's website.
I am on the IT Advisory Committee as a student member. I'm a computer science student who reads technical websites like AskMeFi, Slashdot, Digg, etc. and have seen some websites linked from those pages that have some GREAT designs and am concerned that the process we're following is pretty miserable.
Our school is looking to redesign their website and some of the quotes/proposals I've heard from businesses we're looking at are running in the $50k-100k range. (1) We can't really afford this and (2) asking for quotes has caused the "higher ups" to realize that they're pushing this through "aggressively" and might end up with a product that is sub-par for a price that is above-par.
My questions: If you have gone through the website design process, what sort of steps were taken to garner constituent feedback on the design before and after it was created? What sort of use-case studies are needed? Is this sort of full-scale analysis something that could be more easily done in-house? Are the prices for website redesign so astronomical for everyone, or are we just getting a run for our money?
In general, can you guys give me some tips to make sure and bring up with some people who might not be very knowledgable of the intricacies of such a project?
Thanks!
I am on the IT Advisory Committee as a student member. I'm a computer science student who reads technical websites like AskMeFi, Slashdot, Digg, etc. and have seen some websites linked from those pages that have some GREAT designs and am concerned that the process we're following is pretty miserable.
Our school is looking to redesign their website and some of the quotes/proposals I've heard from businesses we're looking at are running in the $50k-100k range. (1) We can't really afford this and (2) asking for quotes has caused the "higher ups" to realize that they're pushing this through "aggressively" and might end up with a product that is sub-par for a price that is above-par.
My questions: If you have gone through the website design process, what sort of steps were taken to garner constituent feedback on the design before and after it was created? What sort of use-case studies are needed? Is this sort of full-scale analysis something that could be more easily done in-house? Are the prices for website redesign so astronomical for everyone, or are we just getting a run for our money?
In general, can you guys give me some tips to make sure and bring up with some people who might not be very knowledgable of the intricacies of such a project?
Thanks!
Please , please, please, please, more usuability, less glitz. More obvious links to what people actually look for, less clip art of generic "students" looking cool and diverse. And please, none of this crap where the links are arranged in aa friggin arch around a sun-drenched picture. In a word: if it looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch page, it isn't usuable.
posted by orthogonality at 6:42 PM on March 17, 2006
posted by orthogonality at 6:42 PM on March 17, 2006
yellowbkpk--if you email me (in profile) I can forward your request to some folks I know who've done this in Tier 1 Higher Ed institutions and might be able to provide some very specific advice.
posted by donovan at 6:44 PM on March 17, 2006
posted by donovan at 6:44 PM on March 17, 2006
I heard Kelly Goto speak at Web Design World and ended up buying her book Web Re-Design: Workflow that Works. It helped me a lot with our recent site re-design at work. She also has a bunch of guides as downloads from her site. We did our analysis in-house, mostly because a consultant would've cost so much.
I just spent roughly 6 months researching web solutions for the organization I work for. Most of the quotes we got were for hosted CMS/CRM solutions, plus a site re-design and they were far less than what you've mentioned. We were working with businesses geared toward non-profits, so perhaps that explains the smaller price tag.
posted by jdl at 7:13 PM on March 17, 2006
I just spent roughly 6 months researching web solutions for the organization I work for. Most of the quotes we got were for hosted CMS/CRM solutions, plus a site re-design and they were far less than what you've mentioned. We were working with businesses geared toward non-profits, so perhaps that explains the smaller price tag.
posted by jdl at 7:13 PM on March 17, 2006
I work in higher-ed and I'm heavily involved with a lot of web-design/development. As ortho said, usability is key in web development today, but uniting all the diverse needs in a higher-ed institution is an almost impossible task.
You need a champion. This champion needs to be someone from the upper-administration (pres., vice-pres, CIO etc.) that has the ability to push policy and chair committees that actually accomplish something rather than allow the various constituents to force their own agendas on everyone else. One of the core constituents should be any academic committees that are either elected, or have significant involvement with day-to-day student affairs.
Do not heavily dilute the process by over-designing it, but a few requirements analysis sessions with flowcharts and data-flow diagrams might help when designing navigation, folder/file structure, and how to tie all the separate pieces together.
Finally, for the design aspect, $50-100k range is ridiculous. A lot of the people initially involved in these types of projects tend to forget that they are sitting on an enormous wealth of knowledge and experience -- the students (seriously). Approach the schools through deans and/or faculty. Make it a class project, term projects, thesis... whatever. Even if you work-up an initial design, you can significantly reduce the implementation costs if you decide to go with a third-party.
That's all I can think of right now on a Friday night, but if there's anything else that you want to know, or ask.. feel free to drop me a line. Email is in profile.
posted by purephase at 7:16 PM on March 17, 2006
You need a champion. This champion needs to be someone from the upper-administration (pres., vice-pres, CIO etc.) that has the ability to push policy and chair committees that actually accomplish something rather than allow the various constituents to force their own agendas on everyone else. One of the core constituents should be any academic committees that are either elected, or have significant involvement with day-to-day student affairs.
Do not heavily dilute the process by over-designing it, but a few requirements analysis sessions with flowcharts and data-flow diagrams might help when designing navigation, folder/file structure, and how to tie all the separate pieces together.
Finally, for the design aspect, $50-100k range is ridiculous. A lot of the people initially involved in these types of projects tend to forget that they are sitting on an enormous wealth of knowledge and experience -- the students (seriously). Approach the schools through deans and/or faculty. Make it a class project, term projects, thesis... whatever. Even if you work-up an initial design, you can significantly reduce the implementation costs if you decide to go with a third-party.
That's all I can think of right now on a Friday night, but if there's anything else that you want to know, or ask.. feel free to drop me a line. Email is in profile.
posted by purephase at 7:16 PM on March 17, 2006
Well, a lot of this depends on what you want to do. My first question - is the site all flat HTML, or are there "functional" things that you want to do, such as having user accounts, message boards, blogs, and the like? Anything other then flat HTML will require software. You can buy this software, build it, or use some sort of open source option. Whichever you choose will greatly effect the price and scope of the project. Also, when pricing the project, realize that the initial work of developing the site is actually the cheapest part of the project. The most expensive part, over the long run, is maintenance and upkeep. Thus, it may make sense to go with a more expensive, yet easier-to-manage solution if you don't plan on keeping an IT or design staff on-hand.
My reccomendations :
1) Go agile. Develop your site incrementally, one step at a time. Refine it as you go along. You will achieve results quicker, and thus obtain useful feedback even at early stages of the project.
2) Keep it simple. If something is neat and pretty, but complicates the user experience, it is worthless and has no place on your site.
3) Be consistant. This goes for the graphical design of the site as well as the code itself. You will make life easier for your users, programmers, and designers.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:27 PM on March 17, 2006
My reccomendations :
1) Go agile. Develop your site incrementally, one step at a time. Refine it as you go along. You will achieve results quicker, and thus obtain useful feedback even at early stages of the project.
2) Keep it simple. If something is neat and pretty, but complicates the user experience, it is worthless and has no place on your site.
3) Be consistant. This goes for the graphical design of the site as well as the code itself. You will make life easier for your users, programmers, and designers.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:27 PM on March 17, 2006
Also, I develop web applications for a living. If you have any questions, email is in profile.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:33 PM on March 17, 2006
posted by Afroblanco at 7:33 PM on March 17, 2006
Good heavens, I hope you're at William & Mary. Oh, the humanity.
In April of 2004, UVA's website re-launched, with a significant overhaul. They have put up a site that explains how they did it, why they made different decisions, includes different comps and designs, and just, all around, is a useful summary of the types of things I think you're looking for.
purephase has some great comments above. Especially about incorporating students. Professional administrators will want to have professional designers do the majority of the work, and that's pretty understandable. But that doesn't mean that you can't build steps into the process that bring students in to the conversation. Keep in mind that you're in the world of academia. That means that everything is political and everyone has an agenda.
I don't play in the space of professional web design shops, but $50k+ sounds crazy to me. I know a web team that does a lot of sites for "higher-ed-ish" organizations (Colonial Williamsburg, museums, etc.). I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a quote, and I know they wouldn't bilk you. E-mail me if that's at all interesting. E-mail is in profile.
Getting back to that site at UVA ... I really would encourage you to check it out.
posted by Alt F4 at 7:53 PM on March 17, 2006
In April of 2004, UVA's website re-launched, with a significant overhaul. They have put up a site that explains how they did it, why they made different decisions, includes different comps and designs, and just, all around, is a useful summary of the types of things I think you're looking for.
purephase has some great comments above. Especially about incorporating students. Professional administrators will want to have professional designers do the majority of the work, and that's pretty understandable. But that doesn't mean that you can't build steps into the process that bring students in to the conversation. Keep in mind that you're in the world of academia. That means that everything is political and everyone has an agenda.
I don't play in the space of professional web design shops, but $50k+ sounds crazy to me. I know a web team that does a lot of sites for "higher-ed-ish" organizations (Colonial Williamsburg, museums, etc.). I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a quote, and I know they wouldn't bilk you. E-mail me if that's at all interesting. E-mail is in profile.
Getting back to that site at UVA ... I really would encourage you to check it out.
posted by Alt F4 at 7:53 PM on March 17, 2006
My company does a lot of higher-ed web sites. $50k-100k doesn't seem outrageous to me depending on what you mean by "redesign." A lot of these projects we get are, "Here is our existing site of 1000 pages in 300 different templates designed by various college students from 1998 to 2006. Also the functional parts are in Perl 4. Please re-do the entire site in PHP."
That's not not just of designing a few templates but going through dozens and dozens of meetings, design revisions, functional specifications and then (mostly) tedious production, plus QA and usability testing. That's hundreds and hundreds of hours of work.
If that's the scope of the project, go with professionals. If it's a much smaller college with a smaller site in better shape, follow everyone else's advice in finding good resources.
posted by nev at 7:53 PM on March 17, 2006
That's not not just of designing a few templates but going through dozens and dozens of meetings, design revisions, functional specifications and then (mostly) tedious production, plus QA and usability testing. That's hundreds and hundreds of hours of work.
If that's the scope of the project, go with professionals. If it's a much smaller college with a smaller site in better shape, follow everyone else's advice in finding good resources.
posted by nev at 7:53 PM on March 17, 2006
I was involved with two major overhauls of a private college's website as the sole webmaster. One of the most cripping things was the creation of a web site committee that involved different departments and offices (admissions, campus computing, the library, etc). This pulled our focus in far too many directions at once and the whole site ended up being a huge compromise.
The second time around was much better. The process still took longer than expected but ultimately we learned to trust our own department's judgement. However, without learning from the mistakes made from our first overhaul, we probably wouldn't have been so confident. Ultimately the only major complaint was that someone didn't like the background color. We could live with that — you can't please everyone. The first time around we probably would have considered redesigning (seriously).
I like purephase's idea of a champion; ours was the college president. This was a small college (student body well under 1,000) so the feedback loop was pretty tight.
posted by zsazsa at 8:53 PM on March 17, 2006
The second time around was much better. The process still took longer than expected but ultimately we learned to trust our own department's judgement. However, without learning from the mistakes made from our first overhaul, we probably wouldn't have been so confident. Ultimately the only major complaint was that someone didn't like the background color. We could live with that — you can't please everyone. The first time around we probably would have considered redesigning (seriously).
I like purephase's idea of a champion; ours was the college president. This was a small college (student body well under 1,000) so the feedback loop was pretty tight.
posted by zsazsa at 8:53 PM on March 17, 2006
$50k-$100k does not sound unreasonable depending on what you're expecting.
If you needed some kind of financial transaction / course registration system built from scratch, I could easily see it being more than that.
posted by juv3nal at 10:15 PM on March 17, 2006
If you needed some kind of financial transaction / course registration system built from scratch, I could easily see it being more than that.
posted by juv3nal at 10:15 PM on March 17, 2006
I've redesigned a small college web site, and I have to agree with what others have said in terms of costs (not unreasonable quotes, really; especially as nev described) and having a champion on board who can ram stuff through red tape and resistance.
posted by mimi at 4:27 AM on March 18, 2006
posted by mimi at 4:27 AM on March 18, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by yellowbkpk at 6:33 PM on March 17, 2006