In addition to presenting about Giving Your Content Legs (opens new window) at the Penn State Web Conference (opens new window), I also gave a two hour workshop about Iterative Website Redesign (opens new window).

All too often I see higher ed institutions treat the Web as a print document, set it and forget it for two year then pump a ton of money into "publishing" a new site. My (our) approach is different, we are making design, copy and code changes every month (opens new window) based on how our visitors are using the site. This workshop was intended to introduce iterative redesign, the methods behind it and how to actually get started today.

[slideshare id=8307863&doc=psuweb11-workshop-110614152622-phpapp01]

Description:

Complete website redesigns are a thing of the past, it’s time to think beyond the launch it and leave it mentality. Learn how to discover the pain points of your website and successfully correct them. This interactive workshop will walk you through your site as an end user. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing mechanisms, how to create effective tests, and how to publish results to build credibility and authority. This workshop will be hands on with the ability to take away a process to build upon.

Take aways:

Any website you manage shouldn't be thought of as a "project", website's don't have end dates. You have to think of your website as a business, treating every visitor as if they physically came into your shop. The experience they have is the layout and content of your site, why not optimize it for their needs.

Most higher education websites are not completely broken and it doesn't make sense to scrap a site every two years. Take all the knowledge you can from your existing site and make incremental changes to optimize every section of your site. Using free tools you have the ability to pay attention to your visitors in their natural environments.