Paul Boag – for blogpost on this talk see http://boagworld.com/talks/no-money – lots of talk about ‘make do and mend’ at the moment. But the coming cuts are the most exciting opportunity that you’ve ever had!

This is an opportunity to change how you work – to embrace best practice from the rest of the web. Establish university web teams as a driving force in the web world. Paul very very up beat about this! He sees two big opportunities:

• Opportunity to simplify – Universities have more legacy (in their websites) than anyone else on the web
• Opportunity to approach things differently

Simplicity

Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) – said a lot, but really really true. At the moment you have massively bloated, unmanagable websites. Why? When you start to talk about simplifying website and removing content you get responses:

• But somebody might find it useful
• Well my content is too important to remove
• Users might not understand
• But we need to convince users
• Well its not my job to remove content (question – who in your organisation is responsible for removing content from your website)

You can no longer afford to maintain websites at their current size. Can’t keep content up to date, complicated to change, difficult for users to find content – too much stuff. Paul uses Microsoft as an example – they used to put everything online – and then a search for something like basic help with Excel brings back loads of stuff including research whitepapers etc.

So many people involved in putting content on site – can’t keep quality high.

Biggest issue – no time to think strategically about the website. Lack of planning for the next few months – how is your web site going to change in the next 6 months? It is growing organically not strategically.

Paul says “Less money means a smaller website” – so we should:

• Remove content
• Hide content
• Shrink content

Always try to remove content first.

Hide – example of a ‘get started’ guide on Wiltshire Farm Foods – shows the first time, then collapses to compact display after that (see http://www.wiltshirefarmfoods.com/).

Another example – move links you don’t want to do see – small text, bottom of the page.

But politics get in the way – Paul says, avoid politics, embrace policies. Universities like policies! Paul says introduce some of the following policies (not necessarily all of them):

• The link on the homepage with the fewest clicks will be replaced – automatically with another link – content gets pushed off the homepage if it doesn’t get enough response
• Pages that not meet minimum levels of views and dwell time will be unpublished – not deleted, but triggers review process – for content provider to come to talk to you about improving for republication
• Pages that are not regularly updated will be unpublished until reviewed – e.g. after 6 months – could follow email notifications – although could just let them find it. All they need to do is look at the page and decide to republish

These policies can be automated.

However, if unpublishing is too radical – rather than doing that, remove from navigation and search, insert a message on the page saying out of date.

If you could implement these three policies think about how much smaller your website would get immediately.

Paul moving on now to working with external organisations. Suggests that web teams work at 2 levels:

• Keeping website running, keeping it up to date
• Running big projects that will ‘solve all problems with x’ – e.g. re-vamp information architecture, redesign whole website

It is in the second area universities enage external companies – like Paul’s. He thinks that in general Universities are wasting their money when they do this!

These big projects tend to throw away all previous work. Also they bunch up expenditure into one place – e.g. once every two years need huge investment to redesign etc. websites. Also, often very interlinked set of big projects – combine new user interface, with re-branding exercise, with content management system implementation etc. – all have interlinked dependencies, and are all complex projects – creates huge problems and slows everything down.

Outside providers tend to be treated as ‘pixel pushers’ – tend not to use their expertise.

More agile approach needed – should be looking at doing one month ‘sprints’ – i.e. deliver something every month – at end of sprint should have measurable return associated with it. More continuous development – advantages:

• Don’t throw away existing work
• Don’t have single point of massive expenditure
• Avoids complex interdependencies
• Don’t throw massive changes at users
• Build ongoing partnership with external agencies

Paul suggests getting external view regularly – doesn’t have to be commercial company – could be someone from other institution web team. Once a month – meet with external, do some user testing, set sprint goals, talk strategically

Paul recommends “Rocket Surgery Made Easy” by Steve Krug to see how you can do regular usability testing quickly and easily.

Conclusions:

• Smaller sites
• Ditch ‘big projects’
• Think strategically
• Have a monthly roadmap