Last week I gave a presentation to our small group of communicators, it shows the past, present and future goals for the wayne.edu Web site architecture. I didn’t have time to officially mind map the entire process so I just drew it up on the white board and took photos so bear with me.

The Past

Five years ago when I started in the Web Communications department the web environment was completely decentralized and every site was on their own server with their own content managers, designers and developers. An end user would be bouncing from site to site with no visual or information consistency. It made a lot of sense from a department standpoint because they could control their own environment.

The Present

Over the past five years we have begun to centralize the thousands of sites into a central server environment and identity manual. So far we have 350+ sites in a central look with completely new navigation which focuses on the end user. This is great that each site works well and from a first time visitor they know they are at Wayne State University.

The Future

In the next five years our plan is to improve the users experience even more. Right now the sites are still very separate which means the user has to relearn the navigation each time they bounce to a new site. We have identified some key paths our primary audiences need to take to be successful, our goal is to make those paths usable.  This means creating some central repositories to pull information into the main Web site and to disburse to the department site.

Some other added benefits would be greater integration of information and up to date content. A key facts database that can dynamically be updated across the web and reminds when they need to be updated. A central degree and requirements list. Press releases and news will all be housed in the same spot to pull from and reference. And last but not least a central faculty profile system, opening it up to all faculty, not just the ones in it now. This will allow each of the departments be promote information broader and for users who are not failure with our university structure to find information easily.

Execution

This is just a plan and there are many steps that would need to happen before parts of this are actually implemented. On the other hand there are a few things we can start doing pretty soon and we will be getting those in the queue over the next few months.

It looks like “FacebookGate” is happening again this year. I suggest reading the two links in the last sentence to get some context about the issue at hand.

What is Happening

This year it looks like they already created a fake group for us along with a bunch of other school’s class of 2014 groups. This is an issue because the creator and other members of the fake group are not associated with Wayne State University. Although I was impressed they did take the time to include our fight song and other information.

The Problem

It is not that we don’t control the group but rather that the group is part of a larger plan by an outside organization to market to our students on false pretenses. Although the fake group does list “(official group)” in their title it actually is not.

The Solution

Since we have been increasing active on Facebook in the past few years and many departments are pushing to get their freshmen involved early we setup a short URL. This can be used on any electronic or print publications to direct new students to the real Class of 2014 Facebook group. Hopefully over time as students join and we post more the fake group will get ignored so there is less confusion for the students.

URL to the official group is http://wayne.edu/2014/

If you have any questions about the situation or our use of Facebook feel free to let me know.

We are testing a service called Tender Support to handle keeping track of updates and issues.

A single point of contact

It was important to us to keep the single email address we currently have. We wanted to stay far away from a “form” ticket system because people hate filling out forms and we did not want to add potential complication to update a web site.

Multiple support staff working on a single issue

In the past emails went out to everyone in the web department, it was setup this way so everyone knew what was going on. The issue was someone might start working a the task that someone else may have already started on. There was no way to tell everyone who was handling what without emailing everyone. Tender allows someone to add tasks right to their queue and/or someone else’s queue who will be assisting.

Clear and easy to use interface

The interface of Tender is great. It allows us to see at a glance how many open and new issues there are. It is easy to see who replied and even allows for private replies for us to keep notes or talk without the client being notified.

The only downside we have experienced is it would be great if the dashboard refreshed automatically in case we do not have our email open.

30 day trial period

We are just testing the system to see if it will work for our department, it is software as service so it does have a charge and we want to make sure it is actually making the web update process easier before we invest any money.

Feedback

We are looking for your feedback, if you work @waynestate and use us for your web services let us know how response time is and if you like the structure of the automated emails.

If you are not part of the university feel free to comment about your experience with ticket systems and/or support software. Have a suggestion or some tips for using Tender? We would love to hear about them.

About 20 communicators from across campus attended the meetup. We had salad, pizza and pop to offer and a few topics to get the discussion started and get feedback on. I took detailed notes and summed them up below. Unfortunately the raw notes and results are only available to the Wayne State communicators but I did list out some of the broad topics we talked about.

Topic’s and Notes from the Meeting:

• Promoting faculty research/accomplishments
• Media report created by PR
• Quote “At the end of the day all of the University’s research impacts our lives in some way”
• Idea: Weekly News Reel
• Discussion: Current state of the university’s culture
• Thought: People seem to be responding well to the Wellness Warriors program
• Idea: Quiz bowl for Wayne State facts with prizes
• Idea: “Watch for Wayne State in..” email or message prior to media
• Idea: Make the scholars on campus accessible
• Discussion: Faculty orientation is a great place to start engaging
• Discussion: Presidential communication
• Discussion: Faculty/staff/student ambassador’s
• Topic: Digital signage
• Discussion: Social Media

If you would like to be invited or updated on future meetings just let us know, email campuscommunicators@lists.wayne.edu and we will make sure you get the updates about the next meetings.

Site Launches: 25

Total Projects: 165
Online Custom RSVP’s: 35+
Custom HTML Emails: 25+
Online Applications: 8 (transitioned from print to online)
Team Member Added: 3 +  1 Summer Intern

Over the past year we have published 101 posts with a variety of topics.

Here is the list of the top 10 posts from the past year.

1. Javascript on window close event
2. [Friday Links] The Chili Cook off Edition
3. [Friday Links] The Higher Education Edition
4. [Friday Links] The TGIF Edition
5. [Friday Links] The Digitial Media Edition
6. Running Firefox 2 and 3 simultaneously
7. Our Twitter Initiative
8. [Guest Post] Tracking Flash Interaction with Google Analytics
9. [Friday Links] The Thanksgiving Edition
10. [Friday Links] The Build it Better Edition

We already have a load of projects in the works for 2009 and hopefully we can top our 2008 numbers. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone at the university and in the marketing office for all your help and support in 2008 and we hope to serve you even better in 2009.

It has been a great year. Thank you again.

Why this made sense then

It made sense when we first launched because it had to portray a “new outlook” of Wayne State. After being stuck promoting events the last 5 years the main focus of the homepage was to show how vibrant and enjoyable campus is.

Why it was time to make a change

It is time to make the change now that the site has been up for a few months, students have come back to campus and are now accustom to the new homepage. We did a few tests and we found that the stories behind the More Information area were not getting as many views/clicks as we wanted. These were the real success stories that change minds and hearts and we needed to bring these to the forefront.

We tested different options

The best way to get these stories in front of users eyes is to remove a layer of the branding images so we started by just removing the branding images all together and put the most recent three stories up front. This got us the clicks we wanted but came at the cost of less people going to the More Information area and completely threw out our impacting images.

Our second test was to keep the first layer of impacting images but when someone clicks on a category within More Information it would go directly to the most recent story and not to another branding image. This would allow the user to not only get right to the most recent story but it also allowed them to easily click through the five categories to see if there was anything by image and not rely on the title.

What we decided on

We decided to keep the second test running. This offered the best results, it still allowed us to bring the impacting images front and center and allowed users to get to the success stories with fewer barriers. It has yielded a +10% increase in views of the newest stories.

Final Thoughts

Keep your users at the forefront of all design and information decisions. Although we did not get any complaints about the success stories being difficult to find we knew we could get more pertinent information to users instead of them just looking at pretty pictures all day. A users time is their most valuable asset and for them to spend any time on yoru site at all you should be flattered, don’t make them waste that time with barriers to information.

Collecting Cans at Wayne State University

Today is a day to blog about poverty, to bring awareness to others, to inspire others to make a difference. Detroit is no stranger to poverty, it is all around us. I wanted to detail what our department has been doing to work simply and locally to help charity programs in and around Detroit.

In the Marketing and Communications office we try to give back when we can. One simple way we do this is by not only recycling paper but also pop cans. Since Michigan has a $.10 deposit it allows us to collect pop bottles in the office and take them in as a group, collecting ~$5 per bag of cans.

We fill up a bag about every three weeks, after a few months a simple email blast to the department to vote and decide on the charity that the money will go to. Easy and simple, thinking of others doesn’t take a lot of work, normal every day tasks can go far.

I have included a list of the recent charities we have given to and an approximate amount we have given. We don’t have records of last year or the year before but we have been doing this for about three years now. We encourage anyone in an office environment to start something like this, instead of having a pizza party for the office why not give it to the people who really need it. I have a feeling you will sleep a little better at night.

This years charities include:

• Fall – ~$75 to Bethel Food Pantry in Southgate, MI
• Summer – ~$25 to The Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk at the Detroit Zoo
• Spring – ~$25 to The Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries

Last but not least Wayne State University has a program called WayneCares Forgotten Harvest and to date has donated over 600 pounds of food to local area homeless shelters and kitchens.

Pass it on, make a difference.

What is interesting is the quantity of visits went up. The basic stats are below, the numbers seem reasonable with a drop in bounce rate, increased time on site and a large percentage of new visitors.

It is probably safe to say current students in the library have a specific task in mind when they get on the computer. Since wayne.edu’s primary audience is prospective students bounce rates are high among current students. It is hard to distinguish if the increase in numbers is from the drop in current students bouncing directly off the site or real prospective students results actually coming through and not washed out by current students.

Making the standards mode “standard” means the web will no longer be forked and actually it will be converging many existing forks into a single unified path. In one sense it will make the web developers life easier in another it will allow the web to advance at a faster pace, everyone will be looking at the same goal.

Those lazy developers I talked about before will have to update their skills or they will be out of a job. It will also be a platform to hold large companies accountable, they no longer have the “broken standards” excuse to fall back on. It will also unify the accessibility options out their, if they are all reading from standard HTML and CSS they can present the page with fewer quirks instead of trying to render the mismatch of IE hacked pages out there.

The decision comes at a time when the web is evolving from adolescence to adulthood. The tools for a useful web focused on the user have been building and this decision will leapfrog the web into a platform which will only enhance what a user can do virtually.

We embrace this decision with open arms and are ready for the challenge to educate future web developers on the need and requirement to use standards not only as a best practice but as a necessity. The standards have been developed for a reason, without them many professions would become dangerous, the web was becoming a dangerous place to code.

Again from all the web developers in the world, thank you Microsoft. Your decision to work with the community instead of dictate will be welcomed world wide.