After a request, we've selected allow anyone to comment - they don't have to be registered with Google to comment. We'll see how much spam we get! :-)
I realise that it's been a little quiet on ChangeTheSite, but we've been working on the new look site. Current plan is to go live on 1st October.
You might also see some of our new marketing materials, which are hitting UK universities over the next week or so. And some online banner advertising, which will be coming onstream after the redesign! :-)
I'll post a proper post here soon...
Olly
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Less is more...
I really liked this comment from Nick Reynolds. It was about the BBC's new Music site; but I think it reflects one of the things we need to be thinking about at TheSite.org... producing more content isn't always the most constructive use of our time:
As an idea it is simple and brilliant, and it also runs completely counter to the BBC’s traditional way of doing things.We think the answer to any problem is to make more stuff. This works on radio on TV because they are time bound. Once you’ve filled up 24 hours with a day’s worth of programmes it’s pointless to produce any more. But the internet is not time bound – it’s potentially infinite. You can pump more and more stuff into the ether forever. But if it’s not linked to anything else and impossible to find you’re just clogging up the system. The solution on the internet is to do less, make it work harder and ensure that everyone, everywhere can find it, share it and use the data.
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Interview with DK from MediaSnackers
We've been asking various people if they'd like to contribute on our blog...
DK, the man behind MediaSnackers, agreed to answer a couple of questions to get us thinking about what we want to do with TheSite.org:
How do we ensure young people feel they can trust our brand?
How do we stand out in a more crowded/matured web?
Thanks to DK for his responses, and here's hoping it's the first of many connections we make with people as we try to ChangeTheSite.org
DK, the man behind MediaSnackers, agreed to answer a couple of questions to get us thinking about what we want to do with TheSite.org:
How do we ensure young people feel they can trust our brand?
Many clients ask this and our usual response of authenticity, dynamic content, shared mediums etc I'm sure you're aware of. There is a great presentation full of gems to explore here and a superb 'trust equation':
Understand your brand first and then move into areas of developing trust.
How do we stand out in a more crowded/matured web?
You're not going to stand out unless you have the money, resources (time, design / media skills, people etc) and / or products / services... the web by its very nature is crowded so refocus this question. What are your metrics for success? Is it uniques? Interactions? UGC? Links created? Partnerships gained? Stories collated? And so on and so forth.
I'm not being glib it's just so many people try and be more popular, get higher traffic etc without focussing on what they specifically do and then try and do it better...
Thanks to DK for his responses, and here's hoping it's the first of many connections we make with people as we try to ChangeTheSite.org
Monday, 4 August 2008
Getting the architecture right...
If you ever want to start a fight, put a bunch of creatives in the same room as a bunch of information architects and get them to agree on how a website should work. I've been involved in enough projects to know that sparks fly very easily.
What do we mean by information architecture? Essentially, it means the way people can find information on our website.
In the beginning, the web didn't really have any proper architecture. Then most sites started developing crumb-trails; those things at the top of the page that tell you where you are on the site (eg: Home > Home, Law and Money > Money > Student Money > Student Bank Accounts). The idea being that if someone was looking for an article about students bank accounts, they'd start on the home page, click on the Home, Law and Money link, then the Money, then the Student Money and finally the Student Loans page.
That works fine except for two major flaws. It assumes that the person arrives on the first page and it assumes they think the same way as you. If you've ever done any card-sorting exercises you'll know how difficult it is to put certain topics in to particular boxes. Using the above example, finding out information on student bank accounts could, quite easily, live in the Student Life section of our Work & Study part of the site.
There are plenty of examples - an article on Drunken rows with mates could be as sensibly placed in Sex & Relationships, Health & Wellbeing, Drink & Drugs or Travel & Free Time. As an extreme example, information on what should be on your payslip is in our Workers Rights section but what that information means is in Benefits & Tax in a completely different part of our site.
There are ways to solve this. You could duplicate the content so that it appears in different places. We've done this a few times (Bouncers and the Law appears both here and here). But it's not very easy to maintain - you have each version of the article.
Because we use a content management system, we could ask it simply to reproduce the same article in different places; but this has the affect of diluting our search engine rating because there are two places you can link to.
The method that most experts are now using is removing crumb trails altogether and using metadata (also known as metatagging) and dynamic indexes. So, in the first example if we tagged the student bank accounts with metadata tags "student money" and "student life" then it would automatically be added to both those indexes.
But that's just the start of using metadata effectively. We have related links on our page (both internal links to other pages, and external links to relevant and useful websites). Currently they are manually added to each page; but using metadata we could automate that process. So, in the example about payslips, if we tagged it "income tax" we could show other related articles and external links tagged with "income tax" (so the article about income tax and a link to the HMRC).
And that's where the information architects come in. Because in order for metadata to work effectively you need to have an agreed vocabulary. If one person tags their content "student life" and the other "university life" or "life on campus" then the computer isn't (yet!) clever enough to realise they are the same thing. Equally there are times when the same expression can have two totally different meanings and you need ways of dealing with that.
Metadata can greater help reduce the workload and allow us to spend more time creating great content rather than putting it into boxes, but we need to get it right.
What do we mean by information architecture? Essentially, it means the way people can find information on our website.
In the beginning, the web didn't really have any proper architecture. Then most sites started developing crumb-trails; those things at the top of the page that tell you where you are on the site (eg: Home > Home, Law and Money > Money > Student Money > Student Bank Accounts). The idea being that if someone was looking for an article about students bank accounts, they'd start on the home page, click on the Home, Law and Money link, then the Money, then the Student Money and finally the Student Loans page.
That works fine except for two major flaws. It assumes that the person arrives on the first page and it assumes they think the same way as you. If you've ever done any card-sorting exercises you'll know how difficult it is to put certain topics in to particular boxes. Using the above example, finding out information on student bank accounts could, quite easily, live in the Student Life section of our Work & Study part of the site.
There are plenty of examples - an article on Drunken rows with mates could be as sensibly placed in Sex & Relationships, Health & Wellbeing, Drink & Drugs or Travel & Free Time. As an extreme example, information on what should be on your payslip is in our Workers Rights section but what that information means is in Benefits & Tax in a completely different part of our site.
There are ways to solve this. You could duplicate the content so that it appears in different places. We've done this a few times (Bouncers and the Law appears both here and here). But it's not very easy to maintain - you have each version of the article.
Because we use a content management system, we could ask it simply to reproduce the same article in different places; but this has the affect of diluting our search engine rating because there are two places you can link to.
The method that most experts are now using is removing crumb trails altogether and using metadata (also known as metatagging) and dynamic indexes. So, in the first example if we tagged the student bank accounts with metadata tags "student money" and "student life" then it would automatically be added to both those indexes.
But that's just the start of using metadata effectively. We have related links on our page (both internal links to other pages, and external links to relevant and useful websites). Currently they are manually added to each page; but using metadata we could automate that process. So, in the example about payslips, if we tagged it "income tax" we could show other related articles and external links tagged with "income tax" (so the article about income tax and a link to the HMRC).
And that's where the information architects come in. Because in order for metadata to work effectively you need to have an agreed vocabulary. If one person tags their content "student life" and the other "university life" or "life on campus" then the computer isn't (yet!) clever enough to realise they are the same thing. Equally there are times when the same expression can have two totally different meanings and you need ways of dealing with that.
Metadata can greater help reduce the workload and allow us to spend more time creating great content rather than putting it into boxes, but we need to get it right.
Friday, 25 July 2008
Progress...
We’ve just got the end of a really exciting week at YouthNet: things are really progressing.
Essentially there are two streams of work for changing TheSite.org. The master plan is outlined previously; a complete overhaul of everything that we do, changing the functionality, the CMS, the purpose, the whatever… we’re open to changing it.
The second piece of work is a quick-n-dirty update to the design of TheSite.org. Ever since I took up my post a few months back I’ve wanted to put some effort into making the website look more contemporary (in fact, it was even one of the things I outlined in my interview). I’m never quite sure if it’s my brief; but between me and some colleagues in operations and marketing we’ve come up with a plan and been given a chunk of money to play with.
Over the last week and a bit we’ve had four companies come and pitch to do the redesign. The main focus of the redesign is a complete new look to our homepage. Despite less than 5% of visitors arriving via the homepage, it is still our biggest landing page, and consistently in the top five most visited pages. We want it to better reflect the breadth of services and promote what we do. Added to the homepage redesign is a “reskin” of most of the rest of the site – to reflect the new design of the homepage and also take advantage of things like a 1024px width style. For those of you who understand this: this will essentially be putting a new CSS over the existing HTML, although we’ll make a few HTML changes at the same time.
Of the four pitches, two were particularly strong and although it was great going into the last pitch not having to hope they’d be alright, the flipside was it was difficult to choose between the final two. It’s far more difficult to tell someone that you haven’t picked them despite them being good and suitable than turn someone down for significantly missing the mark.
What was great was the pitches were broadly in line with our thinking. I never claim to be a usability or design expert, but I’ve spent enough time involved in worrying about web strategy to understand the basics. And it’s great when someone who makes their living out of understanding this stuff comes to us having had pretty similar thoughts.
The other interesting thing is that we’re not precious about the design. I’m passionate about the purpose of TheSite.org; and I’m proud of the content and the services we provide. But I can’t say I would particularly care to defend the colour scheme or font we use. It was interesting watching some of the people pitching almost apologising for point out things they felt were wrong with the design. As long as they are constructive and with foundation, no-one should feel bad about pointing out where we are going wrong. It’s what we need, and part of the purpose of this blog.
The new design will, all things going to plan, be live by the end of August. I really can’t wait, because the new design will tie-in with some marketing we are doing around the start of the academic year. For all that our content and services are fantastic; they lose credibility if they are badly presented.
You know you work in a good place when you spend Friday afternoon looking forward to Monday so you can get back to moving things forward.
Olly
Essentially there are two streams of work for changing TheSite.org. The master plan is outlined previously; a complete overhaul of everything that we do, changing the functionality, the CMS, the purpose, the whatever… we’re open to changing it.
The second piece of work is a quick-n-dirty update to the design of TheSite.org. Ever since I took up my post a few months back I’ve wanted to put some effort into making the website look more contemporary (in fact, it was even one of the things I outlined in my interview). I’m never quite sure if it’s my brief; but between me and some colleagues in operations and marketing we’ve come up with a plan and been given a chunk of money to play with.
Over the last week and a bit we’ve had four companies come and pitch to do the redesign. The main focus of the redesign is a complete new look to our homepage. Despite less than 5% of visitors arriving via the homepage, it is still our biggest landing page, and consistently in the top five most visited pages. We want it to better reflect the breadth of services and promote what we do. Added to the homepage redesign is a “reskin” of most of the rest of the site – to reflect the new design of the homepage and also take advantage of things like a 1024px width style. For those of you who understand this: this will essentially be putting a new CSS over the existing HTML, although we’ll make a few HTML changes at the same time.
Of the four pitches, two were particularly strong and although it was great going into the last pitch not having to hope they’d be alright, the flipside was it was difficult to choose between the final two. It’s far more difficult to tell someone that you haven’t picked them despite them being good and suitable than turn someone down for significantly missing the mark.
What was great was the pitches were broadly in line with our thinking. I never claim to be a usability or design expert, but I’ve spent enough time involved in worrying about web strategy to understand the basics. And it’s great when someone who makes their living out of understanding this stuff comes to us having had pretty similar thoughts.
The other interesting thing is that we’re not precious about the design. I’m passionate about the purpose of TheSite.org; and I’m proud of the content and the services we provide. But I can’t say I would particularly care to defend the colour scheme or font we use. It was interesting watching some of the people pitching almost apologising for point out things they felt were wrong with the design. As long as they are constructive and with foundation, no-one should feel bad about pointing out where we are going wrong. It’s what we need, and part of the purpose of this blog.
The new design will, all things going to plan, be live by the end of August. I really can’t wait, because the new design will tie-in with some marketing we are doing around the start of the academic year. For all that our content and services are fantastic; they lose credibility if they are badly presented.
You know you work in a good place when you spend Friday afternoon looking forward to Monday so you can get back to moving things forward.
Olly
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Changing TheSite.org
Today we're kicking off a new concept at YouthNet; a new blog to generate discussion, debate and ideas to help us change TheSite.org.
Over the next couple of years we're planning to do a root-and-branch review of what TheSite.org does. We're prepared to go through one of those "no idea is too silly/off-boundries" thought-processes, working out how we achieve what we set out to do. So we want to use this blog to start the thinking about what TheSite.org will look like in a few years time.
We want to involve everyone who's interested in what we do - from the young adults we seek to reach (whether we currently do or don't), our staff (whether as part of their role or not), outside experts (whatever their expertise). If you've got an opinion on TheSite.org, and most importantly how we take it forward, then this is the place to post.
This blog isn't intended to be corporate, but perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves exactly why TheSite.org exists:
I hope that this blog really drives forward our intentions as we try and take TheSite.org to the next level. I welcome comments from everyone - if you want to add a piece then please drop me a message, or an email, or even call me at YouthNet (020 7250 5700).
I look forward to hearing from you soon...
Olly
Over the next couple of years we're planning to do a root-and-branch review of what TheSite.org does. We're prepared to go through one of those "no idea is too silly/off-boundries" thought-processes, working out how we achieve what we set out to do. So we want to use this blog to start the thinking about what TheSite.org will look like in a few years time.
We want to involve everyone who's interested in what we do - from the young adults we seek to reach (whether we currently do or don't), our staff (whether as part of their role or not), outside experts (whatever their expertise). If you've got an opinion on TheSite.org, and most importantly how we take it forward, then this is the place to post.
This blog isn't intended to be corporate, but perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves exactly why TheSite.org exists:
TheSite.org is the first place all young adults turn to when they need support and guidance through life. We provide an inclusive social environment when and where our users need it most; the dynamic and participative online community, breadth of topics, editorial integrity, expert advice partners and peer support make us the essential trusted guide and allow us to tell it like it is.(Taken from the Youth Strategic Intent, 2007-2012)
Our vision:
To create a socially inclusive environment where all young adults are engaged, informed and inspired to achieve their ambitions and dreams.
Our ambition as an independent and entrepreneurial charity is:
To harnesses the power of new technology, to enable 16-24 year olds to learn, support each other, and participate in society on their own terms. We work collaboratively both with our users and partner organisations as we strongly believe that together we can do more to reach out to all young people and provide high quality content and opportunities, when and how they need them.
I hope that this blog really drives forward our intentions as we try and take TheSite.org to the next level. I welcome comments from everyone - if you want to add a piece then please drop me a message, or an email, or even call me at YouthNet (020 7250 5700).
I look forward to hearing from you soon...
Olly
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