Note: This is one of a series of posts from the America East 2007 conference in Hershey, Penn. (See more coverage from the first day of America East .)
America East: Redesigning Your Web Site
Speakers: Manny Mellor, Online Editor and Kim McDaniel, Senior Web Producer, The Salt Lake Tribune
The Salt Lake Tribune has been through seven site redesigns in the past 11 years. “We’ve been doing this quite a while,” Mellor said. The Salt Lake Tribune went online in a very "rudimentary form" in late 1995.
“It has been sort of an evolution over the years,” Mellor said. The changes have included everything: screen width, navigation, color scheme (including some purple), text size (and layout) and everything on the “back end,” too.
Mellor and McDaniel talked about some questions it’s useful to ask before undertaking a redesign. Are people asking for a change? (But don’t base your decisions solely on public comment.) Are you behind on technologies you should be keeping up with? Are there problems you can fix? Do you need to change perceptions? (Do people know you’re a 24/7 news center?)
Some tips:
Your first steps should be to calculate your costs in both time and resources. (Look outside the online department for allies as well as suggestions, they said. “Maybe you’ll get some ideas you didn’t have in the first place,” Mellor said. Also, redesigning can be an opportunity to streamline newsroom workflow.
Spend your bandwidth where it's going to come back to you.
Set your timeline – a realistic one, but not one that’s too flexible.
Take advantage of your traffic tracking service: Look at where people are coming from and going to and use that information in organizing your navigation and structure.
Do frequent walk-throughs with non-online staff members for some outside perspective.
If you’re working with a constrained budget: Consider outsourcing for some specialized content that is resource-heavy for your staff, such as interactive content or sports stats. Look for interns (especially if you have a college in the area).
Don’t assume you’re done on launch day! You’re only about 2/3 of the way through the process on your “launch day,” McDaniel said. She also suggested having a “roll-back” plan if things go really awry.
Use feedback to help you track glitches in the site by offering a really obvious, easy way for readers to respond to the redesign. (You might also want to emotionally prepare for that.) “The first, initial reaction will be extraordinarily negative,” McDaniel said. “People hate change.” As the weeks wore on after the Salt Lake Tribune’s most recent redesign, the feedback got more and more positive.