The web home of professional digital marketer, content creator, and communications expert Matt Sammon
Website Renewal
One of my primary responsibilities with the DVUSD Communications and Community Engagement team is the maintenance of existing content as well as the creation of new content on the district website. By ensuring the district's website was a pleasureable user experience that helped the district stand out from similar districts, the district website could be used as an example of a great website for our 42 schools who each have an individual webmaster.
When DVUSD agreed to extend its contract with Finalsite, the company that purchased the Blackboard Web Community Manager (WCM) platform, part of the agreement included the migration of files from the old website's servers to the Finalite servers and platforms. This project amounted to a year-long endeavor in selecting a new website template, montoring the file migration, then leading the individual webmasters in helping them practically rebuild their websites to completion by a set launch date. This was done on top of me also redesigning and essentially building the new district website.
An already complicated process was further complicated with some surpises from a less-than-transparent vendor in Finalsite. Many of these issues were discovered while navigating the new websites during the rebuilding process, throwing a few curveballs at us while also requiring us to push back the initial launch date from the first day of the school year to the first day of Thanksgiving break. Despite these challenges, the new websites were launched on time while meeting our intended goals when the prject first started.
The very gray and blocky old home page (left) and the cleaner and more vibrant new home page (right).
Initial Goals
When this project started, we identified several goals in what the website should look like and how it should function:
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A brighter, more modern look.
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A website that is more mobile-friendly.
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More photos and less text, when applicable.
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Fewer ancillary web pages from parent pages.
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Fewer clicks for users to navigate around the website.
Those goals were met with help from the Finaslite template and tools, as can be seen with these before and after photos:
Cleaner, clearer, more user-friendly interfaces addressing a user's most important needs up front.
Fewer ancillary pages, keeping users on a main page while utilizing template tools to house content.
Another example of a department channel with reduced ancillary pages, but important information is easily found on the main page or in template tools for a better user experience.
Departments that still utilized ancillary pages (in a reduced amount) had those pages neatly arranged in a navigation element found at the bottom right of the page. This was done to ensure links could be easily found on desktop or laptop devices, while appearing at the bottom of a mobile phone scroll so the most important information was seen at the top of a mobile page.
While the final product was exceptional, and we experienced very little resistence or complaints in the new website launch, there were many lessons learned in the process that will make any future website renewals I am leading more efficient.