aaup 2017: "conceiving, developing, and creating a great university press website"

Conceiving, Developing, and Creating a Great University Press Website:

Lessons Learned from Three Four Case Studies

Panelists

Bill Bishel, Information and Business Systems

Manager, University of Texas Press

Patricia L. Searl, Editorial and Technical Specialist,

University of Virginia Press

Laura Furney, Assistant Director & Managing Editor,

University Press of Colorado

Michael Regoli, Director of Journals and Electronic

Publishing, Indiana University Press

Paul Grotevant, IT Manager, Web & Contract

Services, University of Texas, Austin

PATRICIA L. SEARL

EDITORIAL & TECHNICAL SPECIALIST

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS

pls4e@virginia.edu

Previous Site: 2011-2016

★ Created In-house

★ Wordpress Template

★ Book Data Separate

★ Not Mobile-Friendly

Goals of the New Site

★ Content Management System (CMS)

★ Mobile-Friendly

★ Improve Search/Navigation and Book Discoverability

★ Integrated Database

★ Updated Look

Drupal Platform

★ Popular, Reputable CMS

★ Fully Customizable

★ Large-Support Community

★ Flexible Database

New Site Design Process: Oct 2015-May 2016

1. Examine Traffic on Current Site (Google Analytics)

2. Base Theme Using Zurb Foundation Framework

3. Content Modeling/Organization

4. Migrate Static Content from Wordpress

5. XML Export/Import Scheme for Book Data from ONIX Feed

6. Feature Coding

7. Visual Design

Technology Used

★ XML

★ XSLT

★ HTML

★ CSS

★ PHP

★ Javascript

★ Photoshop

★ Drupal Framework

Designing In-House

★ Cost

★ Customized

★ Quick Edits/Updates

★ Limited by Staff Abilities

★ Time/Learning Curve

Challenges

★ Balancing Features and Front-End Ease

★ Content Modeling & Organization

★ Design by Committee

★ Understanding Drupal

★ Balancing Aesthetic Design with Mobile Accessibility

Tips/Lessons Learned

★ Analyze Site Traffic

★ Content-First Design

★ Use a Front-End Framework (Bootstrap, Zurb etc)

★ Perform User Testing

★ Budget 5-10 Hours Consulting for any Roadblocks

UPRESS.VIRGINIA.EDU

PATRICIA L. SEARL

EDITORIAL & TECHNICAL SPECIALIST

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS

pls4e@virginia.edu

Conceiving, Developing, and Creating a Great

University Press Website: Lessons Learned

from Three Case Studies

Michael Regoli

Director of Journals and Electronic Publishing

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Plan

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Determine website functionality

• Decide on the overall look and feel, develop site map

• Identify preferred navigability, ensure accessibility, mobile and

tablet responsiveness

• What is on the home/landing page, and top level containers

(subject areas, new releases, about page, and so on)

The Process

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Teams created by functional area (marketing, acquisitions,

operations, customer service, etc.)

• Conduct research, develop plans, provide draft reports

• Meetings, meetings, meetings

• Create a final report to serve as blueprint for a Request for

Proposals (RFP)

The Teams

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Analytics

• Audience, Branding, Content, and Functionality

• Design, Navigation, and Vendor Identification

• Technical Requirements

Analytics Team

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Determine usage trends

• Identify most frequently access areas of the site

• Understand geographic reach

• Develop a general visitor demographic profile

Audience, Branding, Content,

and Functionality Team

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Identify key audiences, stakeholders

• Reinforce, strengthen branding and messaging

• Determine content to enhance value

• Navigation elements, define experiences by audience

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Consumer Navigation

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Student

Navigation

Design, Navigation,

Vendor Identification Team

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Identify features and “the look”

• What is/is not working on the current site

• Emulate those features found in best-in-class websites

• Identify potential design groups to approach for an eventual RFP

Sample Front

Page Design

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Sample Title

Page

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

Copyright © 2016 The Trustees of Indiana University | Copyright Complaint s | Privacy Not ice

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Of ce of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 E. 10th St .

Bloomingt on, IN 47405-3907

80 0 -842-6796

iuporder@indiana.edu

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PRESS

PRESS

Days of KnightHOW THE GENERAL CHANGED MY LIFE

KIRK HASTON

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Kirk Haston was a member of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team from 1997–2001

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AUTHOR Q&A

Kirk Haston was a member of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team from 1997–2001

who played for the legendary Bob Knight . Haston was named to the 2001 Associated

Press All-America Team and the 2000 and 2001 All-Big Ten Teams. Post-college, he

played for the Charlot t e Hornets.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Paperback | Ebook

Published by Indiana University Press

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PEOPLE WHO READ DAYS OF KNIGHT ALSO READ

>>

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ALSO BY KIRK HASTON

See all books by Kirk Haston

RELATED ARTICLES

Blog posts, etc. here

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Reading Guide

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Technical Requirements Team

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Recommendation of content management system as well as the

key functionality of the site

• Blog integration, content authoring capabilities

• Content integration

• Author and community engagement tools, social media

• E-Commerce, customer relations management (CRM)

considerations

The RFP Process

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• State university brings levels of complexity to the process

• Auxiliary of the Indiana University Library System

• Vendors appreciated the depth and coverage of our blueprint

The Dos and Don’ts

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

• Do the homework, know where you want to go

• Devise realistic goals, and develop a reasonable plan

• Involve all staff and stakeholders, internally and externally

• Budget accordingly in terms of your crucial resources: time,

funding, and staffing

• Don’t rush the process

• Don’t underestimate your crucial resources, especially staff time

• Don’t focus exclusively on one component like design

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Michael Regoli

Director of Journals and Electronic Publishing

regoli@indiana.edu

Laura Furney, Assistant Director & Managing

Editor, University Press of Colorado

http://upcolorado.com/

From:

To:

A University IT Shop’s Perspective on University Press

Website DevelopmentPaul Grotevant

IT Manager, Web & Custom Solutions Team

ITS Applications

University of Texas at Austin

Who am I?

• Part of UT Austin central IT department

• Provide “recharge” website maintenance and development services in addition to centrally-funded core services

• Team of eight Drupal developers

How do we work?

• Typical custom website development project:• Scope includes branding, custom page types, minimal interactive functionality• 100-300 hours• 1-2 developers (front-end/back-end), plus project management (20%)

• Process• Initial conversations• Estimate• Agreement• Development• Testing/QA• Launch

How was a University Press site different from our typical project?• Unique branding needs

• Extensive custom functionality needs:• Page types for books and journals

• E-commerce/shopping cart

• Automated imports from inventory management system

• Integration with University credit card gateway

• Tailored search experience

• Larger than average budget

Approaching this project differently…

• Start process with discovery engagement estimate:• 20-40 hours for documenting existing behavior and business processes

• 40-80 hours for prototyping and technical solution analysis

• 15-30 hours for documenting requirements and building estimate

• Deliver final report from discovery engagement, including detailed bid for build phase

• If desired, proceed to build phase – no hard commitment up front

Discovery Engagement Process

• On-site interviews with Press staff• 3-4 meetings of 1.5-2 hours each with different groups

• Developer analysis of existing site

• Extensive prototyping to explore viability of candidate e-commerce framework

• Meeting with University Accounting to discuss requirements for credit card gateway integration

Discovery Deliverables

• Final summary report (9 pages):• Documentation of current business processes

• Limitations of existing system(s)

• Recommended system design (high-level)

• Conclusion/high-level estimate

• Bid estimate (4 pages)

• Detailed estimate with hours breakdown per task (4 pages)

What did Discovery provide?

• Established documented basis of agreement for goals of project

• Provided relatively low investment way for Press to figure out what they were getting into; option to bail out before build phase

• Allowed ample time for technical exploration/prototyping for a previously unexplored use case, increasing confidence of estimates for build phase

• Build phase quickly resulted in demonstrable results, due to pre-work in prototyping

• Built trust between Press and IT teams by showing that we deeply understood their business problems/processes

Moving on to the Build Phase

• Five months from kickoff to launch

• Sprint demo meetings every 3-4 weeks

• Target “MVP” for launch, prioritizing some tasks/features as being okay to wait until post-launch

• Budget discussions – keep an eye on the hours, and talk honestly about how to stay on target if something goes wrong

• Cloud platform means being able to build in parallel, and just “flip the switch” to launch the new site on a given day

Critical Success Factors

• Discovery set expectations correctly on both sides

• Press staff had extensive experience with an existing commerce solution, so they knew what they liked and what they needed in a new system

• Developers and press staff used a shared system for making all work visible as task “cards” and discussing issues asynchronously

• Press provided highly engaged staff to represent business needs, and were available for frequent demo check-ins (2-3 week cycles)

• Use of existing, flexible commerce solution for Drupal greatly reduced development time

• Mixing in-person and virtual meeting modalities

What questions should you be prepared to answer from a development team?• What role does your website play in your overall business strategy?

• What are the pain points with your current website?

• Who is your primary target audience?

• What is your budget?

• Do you need to sync book/journal data from a canonical source system to your website?

• If doing ecommerce, describe all of your back-end business processes for order fulfillment in detail

What questions should you ask from a development team?• Should we use separate or integrated CMS and commerce solutions?• Should we use a custom or software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution?• What is the anticipated life-cycle of the selected solutions?• How does the selected solution handle PCI compliance for payments?• How will the selected solution integrate with my inventory system?• How easily can the selected solution be customized for specific business

use cases?• Promo codes/discounts• Examination copies• Sales tax collection• Domestic vs. international shipping• Flat rate vs. calculated shipping rates