28 January 2016
Developing a great online community site is a painstaking process involving a wide range of different skills, including good communication, a thorough understanding of the community’s environment and culture and a lot of patience.
For many agencies, a great website is all about what looks good on the page and how the imagery, fonts and colours work together. Whilst we also think this is important, unfortunately it’s not what creates an enjoyable or smooth experience for your membership. These types of sites must go through an in-depth process of specification, with key parts of this highlighted below. We give here a few of our experiences with these larger sites and our recommendations if you are looking to upgrade your site, or even start from scratch.
Research and Specification
Community sites are complex and always unique, which is why we recommend an initial phase of research and specification before launching into the development process. Be wary of any agency who does not offer you this initial phase, as it holds so much importance for the future of your site. Within this process we delve into your situation as an organisation, what the key issues for you are, who your target audiences are and what the main goals of your online presence are.
We also like to review your historical site statistics as it is sometimes surprising which pages are the most popular. Often our clients have been surprised that a small section aimed as an information point for the public was the most accessed on their sites. This data has implications on how you structure the site, what appears on the home page etc.
Site Structure
Most of our clients have sought our help because a site they had developed years ago had started creaking as the technology got outdated and the various bolt-ons over the years had a negative impact on the user’s experience. We often find with the bigger communities that they can very easily overwhelm their visitors with lots of menu options, embedded links and deep site maps, and it is perhaps the outsider’s eye that can remind them of this.
Your menu systems need to be as logical as possible, therefore. We spend significant time once we have done our initial research with you in developing what we would consider to be the most logical and intuitive system to meet your user’s needs. Sometimes this is a mega-menu, sometimes it’s a dropdown menu, sometimes a side menu and sometimes a hybrid. It really depends on the initial research, but we aim for the menus to be as intuitive as possible, requiring as few clicks as possible to get to the most important content.
So when we build your site, it is fresh and has a logical feel. We know, however, that sites change, and as organisations develop their online presence, the site needs to grow with them. Unfortunately for many, this is a painful process resulting in an overburdened menu, and ultimately confused users. We always recommend after making substantial changes or adding a few bolt-ons, “let’s have a look at the menu, reassess, and refactor if we need to”. We want to ensure our sites grow gracefully.
Usability
This leads us nicely onto usability and user experience. We strive to ensure all visitors to all of our client sites come away from the site with exactly what they need, in as short a time as possible. We try where possible to stick to industry standards and do incorporate a strong usability focus into all of our sites. Since online community sites have very varied visitors, we also aim for high levels of accessibility in accordance with WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
It’s also important in this modern world that your site is accessible to users on all types of devices, including tablets and mobiles. That’s why we use Bootstrap to deliver a responsive experience that automatically morphs your content to a suitable and usable format on these smaller screens.
During our design phase, we will create ‘wireframes’ that depict the site and the user journey without the fonts, colours and imagery. These are the things that people have the most opinion on, so by removing them we can ensure that the priorities and the content on the page is correct, before ‘colouring them in’ with design touches.
Not only is it important for your visitors to have a good user experience, but it is also important for staff of the organisation. If users can never find what they need, can’t reset their passwords or get stuck filling in forms, the number of support requests is increased, which is a costly and wasteful exercise that can be avoided through good usability. It is also important that the people managing the content on your site have the best experience as possible. Too many times we have met clients who have been using antiquated systems and are taken aback when we cut their editing time down by including simple tools to do jobs in seconds that were taking them hours.
Content Management
Content management can be a laborious process and the system you use is a vital choice that can be the difference between needing a full-time editor, or a just someone who has some spare time. Our CMS is a bespoke .NET platform, which we have built to our specification from scratch – we know it inside out, which means as long as what you want is physically possible, we can do it for you. It has been tested and honed over 10 years with dozens of clients happily using it today. Our editor is quick to learn and dead easy to use, but it does allow more advanced editors to dig a bit deeper and have full control over their content.
Many organisations specify to us that an open source CMS is their preferred option, but when we show them what we’re talking about, they just get it.
Membership Management
When it comes to managing your members, only you know your processes and specific requirements. We listen to your needs and can tailor your membership system to how you need it, and we can also offer suggestions on how to improve the system or give you that extra bit of functionality that can save hours of work.
Again, because our sites are bespoke, we will tailor this to your needs. The security of your data is highly important to us, and we put the utmost effort into ensuring your members’ data is transmitted and stored securely using modern hashing and encryption techniques.
Encouraging Interaction from your Members
One thing many organisations struggle with is how to encourage input and interaction from your members. We have many ways of encouraging growth in this area, which we can explore with you in your initial research phase. Sometimes it has been an online discussion forum, where members are able to discuss and share ideas behind the privacy of an authenticated members’ portal. CPD has also been an area of interest for many organisations we speak to, so perhaps a system to manage this would help your membership engage. How about bringing any voting online instead of using paper forms? Ultimately, when your site is easier to use and offers your members the resources they need, engagement will automatically increase.
Read other insights