Website Redesign

What is Ruining Your Organic Search Rankings?

In part two of this two-part series Kadesha and Brandies discuss what factors can ruin your organic search results.

3 Surprising Metrics That Scream It’s Time for a Website Redesign

How Healthcare Website Design Has Evolved, What’s Next, And When It’s Time For A Refresh

Choosing A CMS: Drupal, Sitecore, And WordPress Review

From online shopping to social media to news sites, we are constantly on the web for work, fun, and information. The list of websites we all engage with every day is long — but the number of websites in existence is even longer.

There are an estimated 1.88 billion sites that make up what we know as the world wide web. But how often do you think about the behind-the-scenes activity that allows these sites to exist in the first place?

Probably not that often unless you are a web designer or developer. But if you’ve been tasked with choosing a Content Management System (CMS) for your organization, you may be unsure of what makes one CMS better than another.

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What To Consider When Choosing A CMS

• Ease Of Use — Don’t pick a tool you can’t use
• Cost — Don’t pick a CMS you can’t afford
• Learning Curve — If your team can’t master it, it’s not worth it
  Transferability — Choose a CMS that can still be used if your team of developers changes

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As with any choice you make for your healthcare organization — like branding colors, organizational values, or what to include in your newsletter — what’s “right” is entirely up to and dependent on your specific organization.

Here’s a review of three common content management systems to help you choose what will work best for you.

WordPress — The CMS For CareContent

WordPress runs nearly 40% of the internet.

That’s not a typo — 39.5% of websites are powered by WordPress. Among them are the popular TechCrunch, Variety, and Yelp. The CareContent site also uses WordPress and is in good company with some tech, news, and culture giants.

So, why is WordPress so popular? What about this tool makes it ubiquitous to the very nature of “websites” nowadays?

• It’s easy to get started. WordPress prides itself on being user-friendly and intuitive for content creators and designers. Even creators with limited website or CMS experience can get the hang of WordPress quickly and produce a simple site in just a few hours.
• It’s highly customizable. WordPress’s content editor is straightforward but allows you a large range of flexibility. From themes to widgets to plugins, WordPress offers editors a lot of choices.
• It’s mobile-friendly. Responsive, accessible design is important for allowing users across a range of devices to access your content. WordPress has many options for plugins that can ensure your design adapts to screens of all sizes.

Without wanting to wax poetic, WordPress isn’t the only CMS out there — and it’s not the only good one either. The platform you choose to host your website will depend on your business goals and needs.

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“Once you get over the learning curve, WordPress is super user-friendly — this makes it easy to pass along knowledge for how to use it to clients and teammates. Collaboration is key, and WordPress makes that easy.”

Crystal Choi, Operations and Project Manager, CareContent

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Sitecore — Powerful, But Burdensome

Sitecore is another incredibly powerful content management system that runs popular sites for businesses and organizations such as Xfinity and Mayo Clinic.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of this particular CMS?

• Make robust analytics reports. Sitecore’s native analytics allow you to look at the quantity of views, but also the quality of interaction with your site. Using a metric called “Engagement Value,” you can better see how your site is performing.
• Present content in multiple languages. If you’re looking to natively present content in more than one language — without using a tool like Google translate — Sitecore allows you to do so.
• It’s cost-prohibitive. Sitecore can do a lot, but it also comes with a sizable price tag. Compared to other similar CMS options on the market, the upfront cost is considerably more expensive.

The majority of concerns with Sitecore is its burdensome installation and implementation process. In other words, it simply takes too long to get going.

Sure, it comes equipped with all the bells and whistles you could ask for, but this leads to it having a pretty steep learning curve. Many users who choose this platform do so with the intention of using those said bells and whistles —  but never do.

Drupal — Free and Community-Driven

Another CMS worth exploring is Drupal. Drupal is a free, open-source platform, and you probably interact with it without even knowing it. To see a site build in Drupal, you can check out sites for the University of Oxford, the World Wildlife Fund, and Drupal itself.

“A free CMS?” you might be asking. “What’s the catch?” All told — if it’s a good choice for your organization — there isn’t one.

Here’s some of what Drupal can do:

• It’s pretty powerful. Drupal is capable of managing just about any amount of content, and any scale of site. With a variety of content types, modules, and themes available, the only limit is your imagination (or your skillset).
• It’s highly secure. Drupal is a particularly secure CMS, making it the choice for many government agencies and security-oriented organizations. Drupal highly prioritizes privacy and security with regularly installed updates.
• A strong community. Because Drupal is an open-source platform, it does not come with the same level of customer service or IT support as other CMS options. But what it does have is a strong and supportive community that creates, uses, and improves the software.

While the common theme of Drupal reviews is that it can do just about anything you could possibly want it to do, it is worth mentioning that not just anybody will be able to do it.

Drupal necessitates a higher level of coding knowledge than a site built on WordPress, meaning you need to know how to code or you need a web developer on your team. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is important to keep in mind when reviewing the capacity of your current organization or your client.

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“Content management systems have come a long way over the years, but at their core, all CMSs are created equal. It’s your goal that makes a difference. Whatever the goal of your website is, that will determine if and how a specific CMS benefits you.”

Cris Romero, UX Designer/Web Developer, CareContent

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The Bottom Line

So, is one better than another?

At CareContent, WordPress is the best content management system for our needs. It lets us easily post new content, embed new media like quizzes, and communicate our services clearly with potential clients.

WordPress also, in turn, works for many of our clients’ own websites — but certainly not all.

If there were one right way to do things, it might be easier, but we’d all also probably be out of a job. While the choices might feel overwhelming at times, start by asking yourself what your organization needs, wants, and can manage. Then make the CMS choice that makes sense.

At CareContent, websites are our bread and butter. Learn how we help our clients leverage theirs for more reach, engagement, and return on investment.

Your 6-Step Plan To Website Redesign Success

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In this post, we discuss . . . 

• Challenges faced during a website redesign
  
• What it takes to prepare your content for a redesign
• How to plan a website redesign

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Challenges We Face Before, During, And After Website Redesign

The saying, “ignorance is bliss” is so true. My first website redesign was a wonderful experience because I didn’t know everything that could go wrong. I knew it would be challenging in general, but the constant worry wasn’t dancing in my head, giving me the freedom to successfully migrate 8,000 pages to a new content management system. The outcome?  We launched on time and received praise for all of the amazing content we created. (The praise was from IT, too, which was a huge win).

Twelve years later, and a few dozen website redesigns under my belt, I’m grateful to have the wherewithal to anticipate the common and new challenges. More importantly, having the knowledge to solve the challenges before they ruin the project is key. 

In my experience with website redesign projects, I have found that clients lack 5 common things:

1. Internal governance and alignment
2. Resources to assess and clean up content that exists
3. An understanding of how much time and effort it takes to revise current content and/or develop new content.
4. An understanding of what should happen after launch
5. Success metrics

What It Takes To Prepare For A Website Redesign

I’ll run through the 6 steps  below, but first, let’s talk about the behavior needs to achieve success: 

1. True Grit: A website redesign is not an easy task. You will face setbacks and roadblocks, but you must persevere and have the passion to find solutions.
   
2. Optimism: You must believe that your leadership and your team will work together to drive success.
   
3. Constant Communication: When people know what’s happening, and why,  it’s easier to get the job done.
   
4. Constant Improvement: While you have a plan, there is always potential for improving your plan as you go. Always think about how you can do something better.
   
5. Supportive Leadership: When you know someone has your back, you’re more willing to take risks and do the work to make it happen.
6. Sense of Humor: At the end of the day, we need a sense of humor. It will make the project less stressful, increase creativity, and improve productivity. In the immortal words of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde:

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The Step-By-Step Plan To Start Your Website Redesign

The following steps are tried and true. The more effort you put into planning, the better your outcomes will be. 

STEP 1: IDENTIFY KEY STAFF

A governance plan helps you align all players and standards.

Governance is the people, processes, and systems that help create and manage content through all stages of the content lifecycle. The two key components of a governance plan is to identify roles, responsibilities and required skills and define policies and procedures.

What are the roles, responsibilities, and required skills?

In hockey, every new season starts with determining which roles need to be filled with players who have the skills to help the team win. It’s the same when putting together a website redesign team. This is your chance to identify who on your team can help you win, and who you need to hire.  

• Roles: What’s the reason they are on the team?
• Responsibilities: What tasks and decisions should they take ownership of?
• Required Skills: What do they need to master to fulfill their responsibilities?

What are the policies and procedures?

My personal favorite task as a content strategist is to outline policies and procedures. This is what will make your team a well-oiled machine. It helps everyone, from IT to content producers to stakeholders know how to get things done. From both a content and technology perspective, policies and procedures provide standards and guidelines for keeping the site up-to-date, such as:

• Adding new pages
• Adding new content owners and permissions
• Auditing content
• Updating IT systems

STEP 2: DEFINE GOALS & REQUIREMENTS

Setting goals and requirements will help you define success.

If you’ve ever signed up for a marathon or a 5k race, the first thing you probably did (after shaking your head wondering what you had just done) was set a goal and define what it takes to achieve the goal. This is the same idea. Setting website goals and requirements will help you across the finish line with the intent of winning. When working on a website redesign, I like to set goals and requirements for:

• Strategic priorities and revenue
• Messaging
• Voice and tone
• Online-to-offline experience
• Functionality
• Visual design
• Key performance indicators

STEP 3: INVENTORY & ASSESS

Conducting a content inventory will make your life easier.

While listing every piece of content may sound tedious and time-consuming (oh, it is), it’s the step that will help you determine what content you have that will work in the new redesign and what content you’re missing, aka content gaps. This inventory will be used to help you audit your content based on your new goals and it will help with listing URL redirects. When you see the list of the pages you have on your website, trust me, you will be amazed.

A qualitative assessment will help you keep your brand and message inline.

Sure, you have content on your current site. But does it fit your brand? Is the right information available? Is there too much or too little information? You need to assess the quality of the content so you know how much will need to be revised to fit your brand message.

STEP 4: DEFINE & DESIGN THE EXPERIENCE

Defining a content strategy is the foundation of the user experience.

I may be biased, but your content strategy is the heart of your website redesign. It is a comprehensive plan for developing the right information, sharing it at the right time and presenting it for the right audience. Your content strategy is a documented approach that outlines what and how to make your digital experience a success. A typical content strategy outlines (there’s more than three, but this post is long enough): 

1. Content Vision & Goals: A definition of the goals your content needs to achieve for your business and customer success. This is the crux for planning and developing the right content throughout your content ecosystem.
   
2. Content Structure (Information Architecture & Site Navigation): This determines how your content is going to be organized in the CMS and the public-facing site.
   
3. Brand Message, Voice & Tone: Stating your brand message, voice, and tone makes sure your message is consistent throughout the website. This is especially helpful when multiple authors throughout your organization are writing and sharing information.

Content guidelines ensure all content is standardized.

Your most important document is your content guidelines, used to explain standards for copy and visual design throughout the site. It is used to ensure the brand integrity is not lost when several people are developing content on the site. Everyone needs to see this document. Everyone.

Designing the user experience will make your site a delight.

The user experience (UX) shows how content is placed within specific templates to ensure a positive user interaction. Because of your due diligence of focusing on your goals, content needs and expectations, you made the UX process go so much smoother and more likely to get it right the first time (reiterations are time and budget killers). 

Your visual design will make your brand come alive.

The visual design makes your brand come to life. Again, because you have a content strategy and guidelines, your visual designer has the knowledge he/she needs to create an amazing design.

STEP 5: AUDIT CONTENT & MAP

A content audit will weed out the content you don’t need.

Soapbox moment. It drives me nuts when people say, “we need to do a content audit” at the beginning of the project. An audit means to determine what you have based on your needs, goals. So, until you’ve inventoried the site, defined your goals and outlined your content structure, you can’t do your audit. Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox.

The audit is the step you take to determine what you want to keep, delete, revise.

Mapping content to the new information architecture will make the migration process easier.

Once you’ve finished your audit, you take all the pages you’re keeping and organize it to fit the new IA. Boom, you have your site content. Now, this is an extremely valuable document. It’s what you use to project manage content revisions, development, reviews and migration. You’ll love it.

STEP 6: DEVELOP THE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Define a content development and migration plan so you stay on track with your timeline.

Because there are several players involved with migration– IT, content developers, stakeholders, etc. you need a documented plan to share with everyone on the team about how this is going to go down. Your IT team will love you for this.

Define the technical build plan to stay on budget.

This is simple. Now that you know how much content you have, how you want it to function and any specific needs, you can let the content management system builders know what’s involved and they can give you an accurate estimate for the build cost and timing.

There you go. Your step-by-step plan to creating a successful website redesign. It may feel overwhelming, but it’s actually a seamless plan that will prevent you from having a constant headache throughout the redesign process.

If you’d like to speak with us about this process, contact us. We’d love to help you through the process.

4 Websites That Say “Nope”: Lessons In Good Web Design

In my industry, we call it your “bounce rate”: the percentage of visitors who land on your homepage, then hop on down the bunny trail to some other website.

That means they never click on any of your links. Never look around. Never get to know who you are. And never become your client.

What causes it? Many things, even just typing in the wrong web address. But visitors also tend to switch channels when they see outdated content, eccentric design, links drowning in a sea of copy … visual blunders.

This is why smart web design is so important.

Good Web Design Gets You Good Metrics … Relatively Speaking

Now, it’s true that about 55% of people spend 15 seconds or fewer on most webpages. So don’t feel bad if your bounce rate is high. We all seem to have a shorter attention span than a goldfish these days.

On the other hand, some websites do hold visitors longer. What’s a “good” span of time? Viewers who spend 3 minutes on your website are twice as likely to return as viewers who spent just 1 minute there, researchers have found.

Three minutes. Not really a long time. So, here’s the question: How do you grab them?

Generally, your website has to:

• Interest your target audience
• Answer questions with up-to-date content
• Inspire trust
• Be easy to use
• Be visually attractive, with things like bullet points (see what I did there?)

You can find dozens of tips to make a website user-friendly on the web. But it starts by asking a basic question: At first glance, what does our website say about us, as an organization?

That said, here are 4 statements to avoid at all costs.

1. “We forgot to take our Adderall.”

This is the Yale University School of Art, so we’ll give them a pass for the, er, outre design. However, a business needs to be more “Bill Gates” and less “Andy Warhol,” obviously. Being taken seriously is kind of a prerequisite to inspiring trust.

Here’s a far more powerful design from Cardinal Health’s website:

A splash of color, some beautiful imagery, and a message that goes to the heart. Nothing wrong with this artistic approach.

The takeaway: It’s best if “artful” is also tasteful.

2. “We’ll give you 3 guesses to figure out what we do here. Ha! Strike one.”

This is AintWet.com, and it takes several clicks to understand what they’re actually selling. (It’s hats and T-shirts, by the way. I think.)

This website is an extreme example of a communication breakdown. Forget brand identity: Your website can’t make any statement at all if the nature of your business isn’t clear.

That seems obvious, but it’s a basic step that gets overlooked. Compare Aintwet to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital:

They could have picked a generic hospital building. Instead, they picked a kid. This really says “we’re all about children,” and it hits a home run. (Bonus points for matching the kid’s shirt with the U.S. News and World Report badge.)

The takeaway: Your website should communicate who you are, instantly.

3. “Working with us is as exciting as watching paint dry.”

I don’t know Suzanne Collins, and I’m sure she’s a nice woman. But glancing at her website, you’d never know she authored the best-selling novel The Hunger Games.

You’ve got a great company with great people, products, and services. Don’t turn visitors off with a boring “opening act.” Put on your top hat and coattails, and have some stage presence.

When you get a second, pay a visit to Clarity.io:

Air quality data could be boring. So could the technology that measures it. But Clarity launched a website with sparkling filaments, spinning globes, orbiting electrons, and other eye-catching animation. The Clarity website even won an award this year.

The takeaway: Even a “dry” product or service doesn’t have to mean a dull website. The sky’s the limit on design.

4. “Walk into our lobby and you might see Granny Clampett in a rocking chair.”

This is Mortimer Lumber, a company in Michigan. If their website works for them, more power to them. But I wouldn’t recommend rolling out the “ye olde jalopy” look for your own website.

There are fine antiques, and then there’s old junk. Here are a few signs your website is evoking the Internet’s “Wild West” days from the early ’90s:

• Busy, jumbled pages
• Flash animation
• Tiny fonts
• Wild colors
• Slow loading
• The word “welcome” on your homepage
• No call to action
• A lack of responsive design for tablets and smartphones (Google actually penalizes you for this)

If you’re going for a “classic” look, try something like this, from Kraud.de:

Basic, but sleek and beautiful. Just enough color to make you click. This website got it right.

Granted, Kraud is a home decor firm, so they’re starting with a visual advantage. But your website can soar creatively, too. Ask a web designer about the possibilities.

The takeaway: Simple, elegant web design is always welcome to the eye.

In the end, it’s your website. You can do whatever you want with it. But when you have only a few seconds to capture a visitor’s interest, it’s important to make an instant impression.

Your website says everything about you. Let it make a statement that says, “We’re smart, we’re savvy, we’re on top of the world. And we’re the company you want.”

Need to talk about a website revamp for your healthcare organization? We’re here for you. Get in touch with us and set up a consultation.

End the meeting if your healthcare website vendor says this…

As hospitals and physician groups catch up to current expectations for their websites, many are being duped by web design firms. Let’s pull back the curtain on how some website vendors get one over on healthcare clients.