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Taking the pain out of website launches: illustrated with a case study from the

Institution of Engineering and Technology

Dr Simon Lande, CEO MagusInternet World, 1 May 2008

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About the IET

• One of the world’s leading societies for the science, engineering and technology community

• Over 150,000 members in 127 countries

• Mission: To build an open, flexible and limitless global knowledge network supported by individuals, companies and institutions and facilitated by the IET and its members.

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Magus ActiveStandards™

• Website quality monitoring, analysis and visibility for multi-site, multi-editor, operations

Reporting on anything & everything that is contra-brand

Best practice standards monitoring: SEO, usability, accessibility, legal & privacy

Digital asset management – audit and inventory

• Enables companies to focus resource on remedial action

• In place with Unilever, Shell, SABMiller, ING, The IET

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The IET’s web operations

• www.theiet.org

• ~20,000 web pages

• Content editors & contributors throughout the

organisation

• High volume of content maintained by volunteer

members

• Recently adopted a new CMS

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www.theiet.org

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The web project

• Replacing an ‘interim’ website built for a recent merger Acting on the results of extensive user testing

New look and feel

Complete restructure of the information architecture and navigation

Migration of extensive content currently held on legacy websites

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Taking a standards-based approach

• Establishing goals

Core focus on reputation, usability, consistency and content “discoverability”

• Audit of existing standards

• Creation of a committee to oversee the process

Permanent role for management of online standards

• Standards measurability built into the design and HTML

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Implementation

• Website standards documentation clear & unambiguous Checklists created for ease of use

• Training and workshops

• New governance structure created Website divided into sections, each with owner

• Website tested against standards during CMS implementation Used as a feedback loop to modify/extend standards

set

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Example of the IET’s website standards• Producing content for the web

Readability; style & tone of voice; case usage; grammatical guidelines

• Structuring and formatting content• Discoverability & SEO

Title tags, metadata, keyword usage

• Use of PDFs and other downloadable documents• Using images• Template usage and standards• Restricted content• Group coherence

Universal elements; link policy: internal and external websites

• File naming• Legal standards

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Streamlining the launch process

• Tight timescales, and migration of high volumes of content

• Magus ActiveStandards™ used in pre-launch QA to: Allow editors to identify errors as content published Control the QA/fixing management workflow Reinforce understanding of the new standards Pinpoint poorly understood standards for training

purposes

• Reduction in pre-launch workload of 35%

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ActiveStandards™ : Management dashboard

Shows site-wide status, and progress over time

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ActiveStandards™: Website dashboard

Reports on compliance status and file assets

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ActiveStandards™: Checkpoint errors

Standards are converted to ‘checkpoints’. Errors highlighted on the live page

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ActiveStandards™ : Asset report - images

ActiveStandards™ provides detailed information on all website assets, including images

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Managing standards post-launch

• ActiveStandards™ forms the cornerstone of the IET’s ongoing standards compliance programme Helps web editors achieve and maintain high

levels of quality

• Helpdesk for content/ presentation and technical issues

“Before ActiveStandards™ we had a frustrating hit and miss manual process with no quality control. Now we have a professionally-managed quality process that delivers consistency in a measurable, trackable way.”

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Standards automatically monitored

Examples of website standards monitored using ActiveStandards:

Template standards

Do not list more than 10 items in any of the related information panels

Overview text should be present on every page and conform to guidelines

Refer to the "IET" rather than the "Institution”

For contact details include the applicable international dialling code

Content presentation standards

Paragraphs should be short for readability

Do not use <u>, <b> or <i> tags to emphasize text

All pages should contain header <h> tags

Use frequent subheadings to break up the text

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Standards automatically monitored (cont.)Links

All links should be working Do not use 'click here', 'more' or 'here' as entire hyperlink text Detect links to internal Content Management System

Downloads & Flash Include information about document size within or next to the link PDF documents should be indicated by a PDF icon

Code <title> tags should be populated, and meaningful Limit title tag length to 65 characters or less

Images All images should specify ALT attributes Images should not exceed 30k

10,000 pages32 checkpoints= 320,000 checks/session

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Achieving standards consistency and compliance

With standard maintenancemethodologies

With ActiveStandards

With standard maintenancemethodologies

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Benefits of website quality monitoring

• Reduces time to market

• More mileage from your online spend

• Protects against erosion of brand value

• Helps improve user experience of websites

• Maximises use of your CMS

• Natural extension to training

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Conclusions

• The IET took a standards-driven approach

• Case study proves the value of defining, implementing and managing website standards effectively

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PAS 124: Defining, implementing and managing website standards

“…a framework to help organizations deploy website standards efficiently and harness their full potential.”

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Thank you

“Take the pain out of website launches” and comply with PAS 124, see :

activestandards.magus.co.uk

Simon Landesimon.lande@magus.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7019 4700