University Website - xkcd.com cartoon by Randall Monroe

Every university home page is a delicately judged balancing act.  As the main door into a large, complex organisation, the home page must serve many different audiences — prospective students and their parents, alumni, professional staff, academic staff, current students at all levels, the media/marketing department, journalists, visiting academics, employers, sponsors and investors, government agencies, professional associations, benefactors, random members of the public who heard about a public lecture they’d like to attend and it starts in, like, 15 minutes from now, could you just tell me where it’s happening?

Claire Spencer and I presented a poster at Ausweb 2005 on emerging best-practice for university home pages. The poster was based on a competitor research project comparing 68 university web sites.

In turn, the competitor research was part of a larger project aimed at making some evidence-based decisions about the design of a new home page for the large research university that employed us.

We undertook several types of research:

• user research — an online survey about preferences, ideas and opinions
• business requirements analysis — a survey of internal stakeholders, asking them to prioritise different types of information and online service; and a review of corporate strategies, plans and other documentation about business goals (changes in the student enrolment profile, increased openness about research activity and outputs, key marketing messages, etc)
• user personas — task analysis, identification of key user groups and characteristics
• usability assessment – task-based testing in a usability laboratory, expert walk-through of our web site and several others
• web standards – identifying the coding, accessibility, performance and related standards we wanted to use in the new design templates
• content analysis – extensive review of the content and services already available on the University’s many, many (many!) web sites and in its publications (brochures, newsletters etc)
• site traffic analysis – understanding which parts of the University web site are important or heavily-used, and who uses them (or should use them)
• search log analysis – identifying sought-after content, understanding the language our web users employ (so we can use it in our web content); by undertaking ‘test searches’ we gained an understanding of why users preferred search over link-clicking for some types of content
• stakeholder consultation – interviews with senior managers, communication and marketing officers, content owners, subject matter experts and other internal stakeholders, to understand their ‘pain points’ and identify how the web site might help to resolve these

This research took about three months of intensive work by Claire and me, with help from other members of the project team. At times our manager and some colleagues chafed about the effort that went into this research phase.

However, when it was all synthesised into a design brief and proposed site structure, the value of the preparatory work became clear.

An immediate benefit was that the development stage was relatively fast and simple. Everyone knew what was required and what technical standards we needed to meet. We had a clear task list and timeline. Testing of the prototypes was mainly technical — validating code, checking download times,  and so on. Some lightweight user testing confirmed that we were on the right track with the navigation and visual design.

Another benefit of doing the groundwork emerged when we reached the ‘final approval’ stage for the new design. Whereas previous home-page designs had been the subject of months of debate before being signed off (if they were signed off at all), this time the proposed design was almost immediately endorsed by the relevant authorities, with only one or two minor changes requested.

[grins] Did I say “relevant authorities”? Don’t let that term mislead you: our web governance model at the time was nothing to be proud of. Several senior executives — and quite a few of their direct reports — each thought they had the final say over what went onto the home page. Even a minor change to the wording of a link could lead to months of argument, competition and resentment.

For the web team, tucked into a low-profile niche quite a long way down the organisational hierarchy, the only way to resolve disputes was by careful consultation and negotiation with the higher-ups, often at arm’s length (eg our manager’s boss might conduct the negotiations on our behalf, instead of letting the project manager speak for herself). We had no power and very little access to senior decision-makers. Instead of trying to acquire formal authority ourselves, we took a dual approach that established our credibility.

First, as outlined above, we invested time in ensuring our decisions were soundly evidence-based — an absolute must in large research-oriented university where every staff member believes they are entitled to question every decision.

Secondly, we worked on developing relationships with people who had an interest in the web and could advocate on our behalf. We provided a range of services to faculties and departments, including a broad-ranging training program, professional support via a community of practice, and a consultancy service to help them undertake their own web redevelopment projects. Business managers, communication specialists, IT managers and web staff all benefited from these services, and in turn they provided lobbying support for the redesign project and other University-wide initiatives related to web management.

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Bonus: Gregory Beyer’s review of a non-existent book, “The Devil and the Rising Sun: A Year Inside the West Carolina University Admissions Department” by Cortoroy Chen, makes me wish it existed. Very funny, if you’ve ever worked at a university.

And a non-humorous bonus: web managers and content strategists will find lots of useful standards, frameworks, checklists and other tools on the Victorian eGovernment web site.

How the story started

A 2009 article in Fast Company discussed Proctor and Gamble’s ambition to make Old Spice the most popular brand of men’s antiperspirant and bodywash products. Old Spice already had a YouTube channel where it posted TV ads to modest viewer numbers.

In February 2010 two short videos appeared on the Old Spice channel. These were different from previous ads — they featured Isaiah Mustafa, a handsome black actor with an attractive bass voice and an air of insouciant machismo. Suddenly Proctor and Gamble were targeting a female audience, presumably on the assumption that women buy the family’s showering products.

First came the “Did you know…?” advertisement.

The breakthrough — blogs and emails

Then the breakthrough hit — a series of quick scene and costume changes, a verbal rhythm (look over there, now back at me) and a silly punchline (“I’m on a horse.”) Since it was posted in February this advertisement has had more than 14 million views.

This one was called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” After winning the 2010 Grand Prix for film (advertising) at Cannes, it was reposted on blogs and other web sites worldwide, the link shared via emails between friends.

The advertisement was launched in early February, the week after the Superbowl football match; this is a time of year when new advertising campaigns are launched (in the USA), analysed, critiqued and reported upon. Campaign Brief magazine claimed Old Spice had become the best-selling product in its category (in the USA).

A similar ad appeared on YouTube on 29 June and again was picked up by bloggers and social media users.

Going all the way — individual attention

That’s when things really got hot. Mainstream media personalities started mentioning the ads, in their regular gigs and via social media like Twitter. Popular online news outlets like the Huffington Post picked up the story. And two weeks later, on 12 July, Old Spice Guy started talking back directly to his fans.

The advertising agency’s creative director, Iain Tait, took a strategic approach to deciding when, how — and to whom — the video responses would be created:

“One of the unique things taking place in the studio is we have a team of social media people, we have the Old Spice community manager, we have a social media strategist, a couple of technical people, and a producer. And we’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community.”

The team chose its targets well, even winning broad approval from the notoriously hard-to-please 4Chan online community.

On 13 July a team of video production specialists and a group of social media experts wrote, filmed, edited and published 87 personalised responses to commenters at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Digg and other social web sites.

Old Spice Guy even delivered a marriage proposal (which was accepted).

During that week creative director Iain Tait commented:

“One thing you can sense if you’re lucky enough to be there in the studio is that they’re all having such fun doing this thing. Isaiah is loving it. Everyone who is writing it is loving it. The social media guys are loving it. And that really shines through…

“It’s a really strange thing, but that sense that people are having fun actually manages to transmit itself through the Internet. People gravitate toward things that feel like they’re being done by people who love it. That sense that everyone involved with this is loving it is a huge factor in why this is so successful.”

The end, and the aftermath

In total they shot over 150 videos in three days that week. By 15 July a visibly exhausted Old Spice Guy had hung up his towel and retired.

It’s probably just as well he did retire — after all, who wants to live in a world without bottlenose dolphins?

There have been several spoofs, video responses and imitators, of varying degrees of cleverness and sophistication.

My favorite thus far is the version produced by the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Utah, USA. Starring the “New Spice Guy,” it’s called Study like a scholar, scholar (found via Elizabeth Bear).

Of course, in the online world very little is actually original. Old Spice Guy had already said a few words about libraries.

Keep an eye out for Isaiah Mustafa: he’s an actor who knows he’s onto a good thing. He’s also a Batman fan who named his daughter for a character in the Spiderman comics and who is devoted to his girlfriend.

What it all meant

Two lessons.

First, this particular advertising campaign was part of a broader, long-term marketing strategy for Old Spice (see the Fast Company article mentioned above). Proctor and Gamble have spent most of this decade looking for ways to improve Old Spice sales.

The longer-term campaign was already having some effect — Forbes magazine reported that a Chicago market research firm had found Old Spice body wash sales were up 16.7 per cent in the year ending 13 June 2010. It remains to be seen whether the July 2010 hype makes a difference to their overall sales figures.

Second, don’t be fooled by the ‘social media’ element. This was no Cluetrain Manifesto “markets are conversations” concept put into action. Rather, it was an old-fashioned broadcast advertising campaign. Proctor and Gamble had a product to sell, and their advertising agency set about creating a market demand for that product. Interaction between individual customers (or potential customers) and the manufacturer was non-existent.

Individuals did interact with the advertising agency, but it was within strictly defined terms: the individuals blogged, tweeted or otherwise wrote about the advertisements. These blogs, tweets etc were published to the world at large. The ad agency selected a tiny proportion of these messages for a personalised response. The consumers had no input about product design, contents or production; the company learned nothing about the factors that influence a person’s choice of bodywash.

Photo, above: Bar Graph by kevinzhengli, CC-licensed

Nifty tricks with Google Analytics:

• The Segmentable Funnel trick: find out which user groups follow a particular path through your web site
• The Corporate Memory trick: use annotations to record changes to your web site (so you can see how the changes affect your web traffic — or not)

A good launch needs a pre-flight checklist.

Launchlist.net covers the basics, with room to customise for your web project.

(via Coudal Partners)

Most Australian universities have an online repository of their research papers, articles and theses. Some have adopted a policy of requiring academics to add their finished documents to these repositories (copyright and publishers’ contracts permitting, of course).

Striking an attitude of well-meaning befuddlement, Lane identifies an opportunity for institutions that are keen to improve the public impact of their research. In general, I agree with him; Australian universities don’t do much to promote their eprints repositories as sources of free learning. Thus far, we’ve tended to leave the repositories in the hands of librarians, computer programmers and occasionally to the advocates of so-called e-research.

By recognising eprints as valuable information assets, and treating them as we would other business assets, we could substantially improve the levels of public awareness of, and access to, the brilliant research being done across the country.

It ain’t rocket surgery. For starters it would be relatively simple to:

• provide a link from the main university home page
• provide a link (or even a search box!) from the university library’s home page
• feature new Open Access publications in the “news and events” section of the institutional web site
• include repository contents in results from the university search engine
• link repository records to the online staff directory and to the web pages that profile individual staff members
• as Melbourne University has done, link the repository records to the “find an expert” list that’s produced mainly for the benefit of journalists and prospective PhD researchers
• track and publish statistics on the finding and usage of those Open Access documents

What else could you suggest? How could your institution make more use of its eprints?

If you work in a large company, could you find a similar use for the articles, white papers and other documents your people produce?

How could you link people and systems to streamline the procedures for collecting and using this kind of information?

Earlybird registrations are open now, and close next Tuesday 9 September.

Earlybird registrations are A$660, or A$550 if you quote the discount code MR0243. Register online at the conference web site.

The conference will be held in Sydney, on the weekend of 20-21 September.

Who should attend?

• Designers of navigation, organisation, labelling and search systems that help people find and manage information more successfully,
• Librarians, webmasters, and content owners responsible for creating taxonomies and information architectures,
• Application developers who design web and software solutions and select the technologies and staff to support them,
• Project and business managers needing to understand the benefits and challenges of information architectures in electronic information spaces.

[cross-posted at SneedleflipsockTheBlog]

For interaction designers and information architects, some of the interest is in the design process itself — see Jesse James Garrett’s comments on the Aurora web page about the weekly ‘open design’ sessions that led to creation of the Aurora concept.

For the rest of us, part of the interest is in how much this project looks like an early prototype of the cool stuff Tom Cruise did with the police computer in Minority Report ;-)

Here’s a bit of the ALA blurb about why the survey is important:

“Possibly the most important invention of the past century, the web is undeniably one of the most robust engines of knowledge transfer, political and social change, artistic endeavor, and economic growth the world has seen.

“Remove the web, and billions in trade disappear. Websites enable people who can’t walk to run to the store. They bring knowledge and freedom of thought to places where such things are scarce; make every person with a connection a citizen of the world; and allow every citizen to be heard.

“Yet nobody bothered to conduct a serious inquiry into the working conditions of people who make websites until A List Apart launched its first survey in 2007…

“The responses to last year’s survey began teaching the world about the previously invisible profession powering its information economy.”

The results of last year’s survey are freely available, as are the original datasets of 33,000 responses.

It only takes about five minutes to complete the 2008 survey. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to reflect on your current situation. Are you happy in your role? What are your professional goals for the next 12 months? Are you valued by your employer/clients? How do they show it?

Some parts of the web site flourish, becoming lush with useful content and links. Other areas suffer from neglect, developing bare patches or sprouting thickets of weed-like content that is outdated, superseded or simply not appealing to visitors.

Eventually, minor niggles add up to a general unease about the quality of the organisation’s online image and services. Senior managers understand that something’s wrong but — because they are senior managers — they are not interested in what they consider to be operational details. They want someone to “just fix the web site”.

This puts you, the web manager, in a difficult position. The problem is large and messy: multiple subsites, multiple maintainers, vague guidance from the executives and no agreed criteria for judging whether you have fixed the problem. Suddenly there’s talk about a web redevelopment project, implementing a content management system, changing people’s job descriptions so they allocate more time to web work…

Sounds familiar?

It’s tempting to treat this situation as a single problem. After all, that’s how the execs see it: do the project, solve the problem.

In my experience, this is a temporary solution. When the redevelopment project is finished, the project team is split up and moves on to other work. The redeveloped web site handed back to the people who used to tend the garden, often without much in the way of toolkits, training or helpdesk support.

After a year or two, the weeds and bare patches start to appear, dissatisfaction resurfaces among the senior managers, and the same process begins again. You find yourself treading the same circular path around the web garden.

Instead of continuing to wear a path in the lawn, you and your organisation may benefit from approaching web management as a long-term process-improvement activity.

With this approach, your web site develops gradually over time. A high-level strategy guides you and provides a long-term vision for the site. Web development work is incremental and iterative — that is, you change one thing at a time, measure the effect, learn from the experience, and then plan the next change.

This Virtuous Spiral model was developed and refined over several years by web staff at the University of Melbourne, in particular Martine Booth, Claire Spencer and Margaret Ruwoldt (that’s me).

We applied this model to our own web management work, and taught the model to colleagues in other departments. We observed informally as business units and project teams worked on improving their web sites. Overall, the likelihood of success seemed to be higher when the model was used.

The model is similar to well-established approaches for business process management. It draws on project-management theory and the concept of the virtuous circle.

The Virtuous Spiral’s usefulness goes beyond the field of web development. It can also be applied to other areas of business activity. During 2008 I will write in more detail about two case studies, showing how the Virtuous Spiral can be used for staff training and internal communication programs.

Further reading

Wikipedia: virtuous circle and vicious circle

Wikipedia: project management

Wikipedia: human interaction management (business process management)

Jeffrey Veen (2000). The Art and Science of Web Design. New Riders Press, USA. ISBN 0789723700.

Jesse James Garrett (2003) “The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams“, essay published by Adaptive Path

Greg Storey (2005) “Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia (or Build a Web site for No Reason)“, article in A List Apart

Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler (2 ed, 2004) Web Redesign 2.0: workflow that works. New Riders Press, USA. ISBN 0735714339. Related templates and tools downloadable from the authors’ web site.