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2.2.4. Recommendations for Site Acceptance
A Lotus Web Content Management project can only be successful if the persons
involved in the project are motivated to give their part. Often, these
kinds of projects involve for the first time a wide range of job roles
within an organization. Other then many other IT or knowledge projects,
a Web site — whether internal or external — most likely involves all
parts of the organization. Organizations can underestimate the political,
local, and cultural problems associated with a project of this type, and
this underestimation can become the biggest challenge of the project. Therefore,
it is crucial to communicate the reason and business value of the project
and to get a wide acceptance of the project for it to be successful.
One challenge constantly voiced by technical teams is the lack of site
use by many of organization's staff and the lack of content contribution
by the business stakeholders. We recommend a few basic actions to help
build support for the Web site. These recommendations are as follows:
Business stakeholders
Identify a set of business stakeholders,
including the target group (not necessarily the designated intranet liaisons)
to not only contribute to information architecture sessions but to provide
feedback on general layout, design direction, and so forth. Ask these stakeholders
to communicate within their groups, identify potential power users, and
commit contributions of new content to the site. Consider leveraging the
power users as beta testers of the site, both as users and content authors.
Design and layout approach
To accommodate the broadest community
of users, we recommend developing three discrete design directions, focusing
on page layout and navigation. Those design directions should then be presented
to a focus group comprised of a cross-section of customer users. Feedback
from those users provides specific direction into how the site should be
designed and what content should be highlighted. A facilitator should be
engaged to conduct the session (it could be a qualified person within the
organization), and the session must be scripted with specific questions
asked of the group.
Communications and enablement
As with any deployment of a new system,
the organization should develop a communications plan to introduce the
new Web site. If power users are identified within the process areas, they
can help provide a level of enablement and support within their groups
when the new site is launched.
Wireframe demonstration
The communication should contain a wireframe
demonstration that illustrates the site navigation. In that demonstration,
very simple action settings should be enabled for demonstrating the multiple
ways of providing information. Not all information access methods need
to be demonstrated. Open and agreed areas should be identified and marked.
In meetings with business users, demonstrations such as this require little
preparation time but are effective in communicating accessibility and usability
concepts.
Here are some examples of the wireframes
that were drawn up for the RiverBend site.
The following figure illustrates the home page or landing page, which is
a quick jumping point for site visitors. This page contains the following
items:
1. Offers menu to tempt visitors into navigating
to new exciting content, such as a new coffee blend
2. Four images that allow quick access to the
Coffee, Tea, News, and Company information
3. Footer with short links to simple contact,
policy, and site map information
The following figure shows the main or general page, which provides access
to everything.
4. Navigational elements expanded to show all
areas of the site, one parent and one child node deep.
5. Offers menu re-used, perhaps slightly re-arranged
(by date?)
6. Center of the page for the main content delivery
area, with inline tools when available, and Rate button to use an API function
7. Search
8. Campaign area to deliver targeted information
deepening upon season or date (for example, eggnog or cinnamon coffee at
Christmas, iced teas and coffee in the summer)
9. Simple links menu with a suggestion box (remote
action?)
10. Re-used footer
