What it means to launch a website
So happy to announce that my team launched a giant redesign (we penned it "Refresh") of our school's main website (http://fiu.edu). Check it out, tell me what you think! I'm open to all insights and critiques.
We worked, essentially, all year on the site, utilizing elements of responsive web design as well as parallax scrolling and multiple avenues for content sustainability. Pretty proud of this thing, and what's best about it: it's gonna keep growing.
Content doesn't end there
This idea is something I've come across working with my team the past year: live content. And it's something I want to push more with clients, who believe that site launch is the end of the web development process... which couldn't be any farther from the truth.
The reality is "launching a site" marks as just one step in the process of sustaining the site's content and the site itself. The content is up and it's live, but what now? Does it just stay there until the next redesign?
Maintaining your site's content is a process in itself, but one that will benefit your site's relevancy.
Think of it as a newspaper. Every day, publications have an AM team meeting discussing what's going on the next day's paper. Sometimes even two meetings throughout the day. They discuss the content for both the paper and the site.
Now, depending on the site you're working with, a daily meeting probably isn't necessary. But let's say you're dealing with a school site that's visited by students every day. From my experience, most students use the site simply for getting the information they need. But the user experience is vital. Supplementing the students with news stories and social media content (Instagram photos, tweets, facebook posts) can further the student presence on the site.
That's where I'm at now. I've become somewhat of a liaison for my team within the news organization at my school. Simply maintaining a presence within this organization not only has me gathering fresh content on a weekly basis, but it builds bridges with other divisions and makes information transparent.
Content needs maintenance, review, revisions, rewrites, etc. It never ends. And like Kristina Halvorson says in her book "Content Strategy for the Web", the only time you can not worry about content is when it's "removed--archived or literally deleted--from your website. The end."
Introducing clients to this
So when working with clients, think in the long-term, especially at kick-off. Devise a post-launch plan for content maintenance. Obviously, you need to train your clients on how to use the CMS, but also set up content meetings in the weeks after launch. Weekly meetings that serve as not only content huddles (what's gonna change this week? If they have a blog, what story are they gonna post this week? What's going up on the calendar?) but as routine-starters that get clients in the groove of updating the site on a consistent basis.