Storytelling

Behind the scenes, in the still of the night, between meetings, from Aggie-land in Texas, and upon arrival in Cape Town, the W&M Bloggers are, well, blogging!

We have talented admission interns writing about their summer work (and adventures), their life at W&M, and eels at the Williamsburg Farmers Market.

We have exceptional graduate and undergraduate students writing about their love for the College, summer internships, Sam Sadler, and addiction to Wawa coffee.

We have committed professors and administrators writing about how to stump an admission dean, how to empower a community through medical outreach, how to be dean on duty, and (my personal favorite) how to structure readings and assignments for a fall freshman seminar.

Although they may not realize it, our official bloggers are storytellers. Powerful web communication comes from the personal stories of the W&M community. Less convinced? Recall Andrea's post on the topic.

Background on W&M Bloggers.

posted by Susan Evans

re.Mason :)

mStoner wrapped up a two-day visit to campus this afternoon. Complete with sandwiches from Lenny's Gourmet, we kicked off a series of meetings planned by Andrea Sardone and Jeff Swingle on Thursday, May 22. During Thursday's meetings, Voltaire Miran and Mark Sheehy met with about 20 administrators and faculty members in the Mason School of Business. Today, Voltaire and Mark had the opportunity to talk with Dean Larry Pulley.

The mStoner team's project portfolio includes work with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

posted by Susan Evans

There are modifications and there are issues

Arts & Sciences departments represent a major portion of the College - both in practice and within the W&M web presence. For the past nine weeks, I've worked directly with Carl Strikwerda (Dean of the Faculty), Sue Peterson (Dean of Undergraduate Studies), and Steve Otto (Director of Communications) on the unique page layouts and designs proposed for Arts & Sciences.

There are modifications!
After three rounds of design revisions and enhancements, we now have two home page options to offer to Arts & Sciences departments. At the request of the dean's office, we've also changed many other design aspects like font color, icons, background colors, images, and logo placement. All along, we've planned for flexibility and the widgets in the new designs can be turned on or off - and reordered - to suit. Widgets? The functional elements like the Events box, the stacked news items, and the departmental special interest features (e.g., Footnotes).

There are issues!
The more the Arts & Sciences designs change, the more the issue stays the same. From the beginning of our discussions, Carl Strikwerda, Sue Peterson, and Steve Otto have consistently requested that the global navigation bar be removed or relocated to the top of the designs used for Arts & Sciences sites. From their perspective, the global navigation bar (About, Academics, Admission, etc.) is unnecessary and confusing for visitors to Arts & Sciences sites. A number of A&S department chairs share these concerns - many of them spoke about this at presentation/feedback sessions we hosted. I've heard from many chairs and many faculty through email messages, phone calls, and casual conversations on the paths around the Sunken Garden. Most have offered constructive opinions and feedback - some have been less than civil.

In my professional judgment, global navigation must be obvious and in the same location on all web pages. Consider the global navigation on these familiar sites. In my view these websites represent the current best thinking on interface design and web navigation.

Flickr
Yahoo
Google
eBay
Amazon.com
Apple
Facebook
CNN.com
BarnesandNoble.com
We have used experts to test our design and navigation choices. During usability testing, we included three tasks proposed by the dean's office. The dean's office chose tasks that were intended to get at possible confusion between global navigation and departmental navigation. All of the prospective students we tested were able to accomplish the tasks proposed by Arts & Sciences - 87% (13 of 15 testers) used the navigation offered by the A&S menus and 13% (2 of 15 testers) used the global navigation. The two testers who used the global navigation made a navigation choice that A&S viewed as not ideal; but still, the link the testers chose led to what they were seeking. In my professional judgment, the global navigation bar in the new W&M design works - even within an Arts and Sciences site.

Many faculty have pointed to numerous other college and university sites that do not employ global navigation within their web presences. Unfortunately, there are all too many examples of higher education web sites that are constructed like organizational charts. In my professional judgment, there is much to be gained from a navigation scheme and information architecture that allows our website visitors to find what they seek without understanding the complicated structure of W&M units and departments.

posted by Susan Evans

Mason, mStoner, May

On May 22 and 23, Voltaire Santos Miran and Patrick DiMichele of mStoner will be on campus to meet with small groups in the Mason School of Business. Jeff Swingle and Joel Pattison are finalizing the details of the visit. Voltaire and Patrick will use the info they gather to propose a new information architecture and home page design concept for mason.wm.edu.

W&M's business school is planning for a spring 2009 re-launch of their website using a new home page concept and design from mStoner.

posted by Susan Evans

GUEST BLOGGER: It's not about us anymore...

I had several titles for this post, including:

The more things change, the more things REALLY change...

Out with the old (marketing), in with the new (marketing)....

We're hearing a lot about web 2.0 these days. We've watched YouTube videos and joined LinkedIn and we've even visited some of our colleagues' MySpace pages. However, some of the conversations I've been having with our content creators in the Mason School and with those in the re.web project, indicate that we still operate under the impression that web 2.0 is for them and we'll just keep doing what we've been doing. After all, we ARE William & Mary for crying out loud!

Newsflash: Web 2.0 is for us because it is about THEM.

Business to Consumer marketing (B2C) is over. It's Consumer to Consumer (C2C) marketing now. People are highly sophisticated (and a little cynical) when it comes to parsing out what's important to them. THEY are not interested in what we have to say unless we're talking with them and not AT them. The old marketing was to blast a consumer with images and messages. New marketing is to get people talking about the product and recommending it to each other. People still trust each other when it comes to decisions. Word of mouth and referrals from friends and family are still the way people make decisions and form opinions. The web can facilitate this in ways we've never imagined.

We can do this in the form of blogs. Yes, it's a little scary but there are ways to moderate them and bloggers have a great way of policing themselves, too. Because of the viral nature of the internet, blogs are indexed, tracked, and spread around the world. Blogs index each other, so one article could become singled out and influential. (Remember the old hair shampoo commercial--and they told two people, and so on, and so on...)

Technorati.com has tracked that there are over 80 million blogs worldwide now. The conversations are happening between people and we will be smart to join the conversations and give people opportunities to talk with us and about us.

Realize this: A post on a blog anywhere in the world can be ranked higher in a Google search than the same information posted on a website by a company or an organization. This means that what WE say doesn't matter as much was what the bloggers say. Major news organizations are now dipping into the "blogosphere" for news!

People are sharing opinions and insights about products, institutions, and ideas that carry a lot more credibility than we can ever dream of. The point is that the best way to get more people talking and thinking about William and Mary is to to encourage more talking and thinking about W&M. The bottom line is that ideas that are spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas that are delivered at an individual. The idea of William and Mary is a powerful one. Our students that come here know this and the more they talk about it, the better. Their experiences and the viral nature of the internet is a powerful combination.

We need to embrace the C2C concept and create more access points for our stories to be told and heard and repeated, an so on and so on. Blogs, wikis, vlogs--it sounds like a different language. Because it is. The internet has created a whole new world for communication.

posted by Andrea Sardone, Director of Marketing Communications, The Mason School of Business

Letter to a W&M Web Editor...

Dear W&M Web Editor,

Thank you for writing. I know you have a lot of questions about re.web, and what it means for your website.

We've created a timeline for moving departmental websites into the CMS and design suite. It will begin in June: mStoner and the re.web project team will transition top-level websites as we prepare for the launch of the College's new home page on July 31. After the July launch, departmental websites will gradually migrate to the new web content management system.

With guidance from the Web Advisory Committee, the W&M Web Team will manage site transition and provide central support for departments. Rather than simply moving existing sites into the CMS, our goal is to redevelop sites using a comprehensive approach. This means working on information architecture and examining content, copy, photography and multimedia.

A copy of the transition plan is now available (pdf).

Thank you for your interest and support of this project.

Sincerely,
Joel Pattison
re.web project team

Am I Re-living Her Life?

I met Nancy Prater from Ball State University recently. I'm finding that her role in the relaunch of the BSU site is eerily like mine for the W&M site. At first, I thought the extent of the comparison was that, like me, Nancy benefited from the experts at mStoner. Now I know from reading an interview Nancy did with Journalism Hope that we think alike too.

My favorite part of Nancy's interview about the BSU relaunch is that when K. Paul Mallasch asked, "I like that you call it a re-launch rather than a re-design. Can you explain the difference between the two for our readers?" Nancy replied:

Sure. I think this is an important distinction, too. The big difference is that a redesign implies a simple face lift of how the site looks. However, ours was more than just a face lift - it really was an "extreme makeover." The site now has a fully-planned information architecture, which is just a fancy word for site outline or plan. This may seem like a minor thing, but Ball State's Web site was like a lot of Web sites of large universities - it grew organically over the years, with no real plan for growth. That has all changed.

Preach it, sister. This is precisely why we decided to call ours re.web.

posted by Susan Evans

Note to Self: Measure Results

Michael Stoner joked that 11 or so years ago when he judged the national CASE awards for websites for the first time, he had to,

unplug the fax machine to dial in on a computer to view the one entry in the website category.

Over the past two days, we spent hours examining 33 institutional website submissions and 99 special purpose site entries. No surprise that, since 1996, the overall quality and impact of higher education websites is certainly much higher. Colleges and universities now get it - a school's website is the major communication asset.

Most interesting to me was the often missing description of outcomes on most of the submissions. The ability to measure results after the launch of a comprehensive, and often expense, web design/development project still eludes university web professionals. Very few entry forms included comprehensive and specific data on outcomes. Agenda item for re.web project team next week: what data do we need to capture pre-launch for reporting results a year from now?

posted by Susan Evans

Next Stop, Philadelphia

I write en route to Princeton; by way of Richmond, Washington, D.C. and Wilmington, Delaware. Amtrak is the way to go - power at every seat and the "quiet car" is for introverts and business travelers who want uninterrupted time to concentrate.

I'm thinking about tomorrow and Wednesday when, on the campus of Princeton University, I'll be one of 15 judges for the web site category of the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards.

So what makes a good web site? I did a quick search of the CASE site and found the 2007 Judges Report for the Web Site category. I found this section to be good preparation:

What makes an award-winning institutional Web site? We asked ourselves that question before we began viewing the sites. Here are some important elements:

• a sound strategy
• sound information architecture, navigability and usability and good search
• content developed for the site and deployed effectively across the site
• effective management
• distinctive or appropriate design—the look and feel of the site
• technology used on the site and adherence to standards
• evaluation plan—and results
• strong institutional identity that is consistent deep into the site

By the way . . . the Amtrak website, though not a CASE entry, satisfied many of the elements above and oriented me for my first train ride in 27 years.

posted by Susan Evans

Kindred Spirits

I love driving to VIMS. It's always a relaxing 25 minutes on the Colonial Parkway.

Today, Mark Windley and I spent a couple of hours meeting with Barb Parcell (VIMS webmaster) and Dave Malmquist (VIMS communications director) about their plans for a new VIMS web site. mStoner is creating a new home page design (blue for water?) for VIMS and their site will be part of the new web CMS.

We talked time tables and design choices - and contributed ideas about everything from web writing to project planning. Mark and I promised to share various documents and spreadsheets developed for our own re.webing.

Enjoyed a return trip on the Parkway and fired off a few attachment filled emails to Barb and Dave.

posted by Susan Evans

GUEST BLOGGER: Saying "Yes" to Web Re-Tooling Pays Off for Arts & Sciences

Back a year or so ago, before we started our work re-tooling the Arts & Sciences websites, I checked with some colleagues at other institutions to see if they had any suggestions or advice.

“Don’t even try” was about the most positive comment I heard. “Not possible in a university environment to rally around shared objective. Like herding cats.”

Turns out, William and Mary really is different.

Nearly all of our units have now been through the transition process with their websites. We took a fresh look at the content, and new ways we could serve our audiences better. We cleaned up a lot of coding and deleted old files. The results have been gratifying, and we’re now positioned very well for the coming transition to re.web.

Each of our units approached the re-tooling a little differently. The common thread was a real commitment to presenting our work--and the College--so that our audiences could better understand what it is we do, and how they can participate or benefit.

It’s exciting to contemplate what we can accomplish as our 400+ W&M web editors pull together through re.web. And I’m pretty sure those nay-saying colleagues of mine are in for another surprise.

posted by Steve Otto, Director of Communications for Arts & Sciences and guest blogger

With "Vessels" in the IA

Sandwiched between several CMS demos and meetings attended by the VIMS contingent, a few of us met in the late afternoon last Wednesday to talk about the VIMS web strategy. Voltaire Miran walked through a detailed report with Dave Malmquist, Barb Parcell, Tanya Ward, Newt Munson and me. The small conference room in Blow Hall was bursting with ideas, questions, and suggestions. Truth be told, I had to leave just after five that day because it was my daughter's 17th birthday. The VIMS crew stayed until 5:30PM or so to wrap up the planning for a new VIMS web site with Voltaire.

We are pleased by the work of the mStoner team. I hope Andrew Bauserman won't mind that I quote from an email he sent after reading the VIMS Web Strategy Report:

WOW !!!
mStoner really seems to me to have done their homework, *listened* to what the folks at VIMS had to say, and have put together a consistent IA across a myriad of diverse components.

WOW !!!
They make it look so simple. It's like F=ma is such a simple formula that a high school student can learn it and use it, but it took thousands of years of human civilization before Newton was kind enough to write it down so simply for us. Thankfully, VIMS was not asked to wait thousands of years for the clarity they received today.

It is ... impressive that even the wire frames, which are simple placeholders for the navigation and such, are not mere cut-and-paste jobs off of each other, the Law wire frame, or the original W&M wire frame - but really represent the "weight" placed on key elements (...e.g., the VIMS newsletter signup on their root page...).

I think we selected the right company for the strategy, IA, and design aspects of re.web!

posted by Susan Evans

Over the River and Through the Woods

Well, maybe that should be reversed. The mStoner consultants had to travel through the woods on the Colonial Parkway and then head over the George P. Coleman Bridge to arrive at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point today. This is the one William and Mary graduate school not located in Williamsburg. But, they have the distinct privilege of working on beautiful waterfront property along the York River.

As of 2:00 p.m., Voltaire Santos Miran and Devon Moore had met with about 30 folks for the VIMS strategic discovery. The enthusiasm and excitement about the re.web project was evident as they shared their ideas and thoughts about VIMS and how their web presence could speak for what the school is about.

But, the day isn't over yet. With over three hours of meetings still ahead, the consultants have more to discover from our marine science colleagues.

posted by Tina Coleman

The W&M Web and More

Lately, I've been thinking about all that we have in our bag of tricks that will contribute to an exceptional W&M web presence. For instance, in addition to the W&M web site, we have myWM, W&M on iTunesU, Facebook, and even Second Life as possibilities. The challenge will be integrating these tools in a way that supports the College's mission and goals.

I read the eduStyle blog regularly and earlier this week George Mason's Facebook site was highlighted as a standout among social sites.

http://www.edustyle.net/blog/?p=39

posted by Susan Evans

Destination and Compass

If you are reading the mStoner blog, you know that Chris Sherrill has written a couple of posts about the importance of strategy. In particular, I benefited from his What is Strategy? entry. His definition of a strategic plan as ". . . a combination of destination and compass" was of timely help to me as I prepared for a recent presentation to the Communications Committee of the W&M Foundation Board.

I'm even more encouraged by his subsequent post called Applied Strategy. And not because of the shout out to W&M's re.web project ... because managing a plan (compass) applied to a great W&M web project (destination) is near and dear to my heart.

posted by Susan Evans

mStoner got some Education

Patrick and Voltaire from mStoner spent Thursday, November 8 in Jones Hall meeting with about 20 faculty, staff and students in the School of Education. Through detailed, face-to-face discussions, the mStoner team gathered what they need to know about mission, programs, and all that is special about this W&M school. The data will make for a great new web presence.

Thanks go to Dot Osborne for her skill with logistics and her work to put together an assortment of recent publications and materials for mStoner review. It was a long day, but Patrick and Voltaire were impressed by the vibrant and interesting nature of the School of Education. Thanks also to Sue Thompson for keeping the mStoner team supplied with candy during the post-lunch slump.

posted by Susan Evans

mStoner and the School of Education

mStoner will be back in Williamsburg next week. One of their tasks: complete strategic discovery sessions for the W&M School of Education.

For those of you who may have missed our earlier posts, strategic discovery is one of the ways mStoner learns about our institution. Members of the mStoner team (in this case, Patrick DiMichele and Voltaire Santos Miran) spend a day meeting with small groups of students, faculty and staff.

We want our new web presence to be both cohesive and flexible. To that end, the School of Education (along with the School of Law and VIMS) will have a visual design and site layout that makes sense for them. In short, they will maintain a resemblance to www.wm.edu while developing their own content and character.

Next week's strategic discovery will lay the foundation for a successful redesign of the School of Education web site.

posted by Joel Pattison

Weekly re.web Podcast: Go Ask Alice

Episode two of our weekly podcast about re.web is called "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There." Enjoy!
Links to the re.web content within the W&M on iTunes U site:

• subscribe to podcast (does not require iTunes)
  


• download episode two (does not require iTunes)
  


• download the transcript for episode two (PDF, does not require iTunes)
  

posted by Susan Evans

No Nail Biting Going On Here

Today we wait ... tomorrow we wait ... for the mStoner Web Strategy Report!

Patrick DiMichele has endless patience for my subtle (first time I asked) and now not so subtle hints about the contents of THE report he's writing. It is, after all, going to be chock-full of ideas, concepts, and recommendations for the W&M web. If Patrick weren't such an exceptional web guru, project manager extraordinaire type, he could be a CIA agent.

All kidding aside, we expect a draft strategy report from mStoner early next week ... picture me biting my nails. Are you reading this, Patrick? ;)

posted by Susan Evans

Tell Me More, Tell Me More

Critical conversations between the mStoner team and people at the College are continuing in the coming week. Patrick and Mark are scheduled to conference call with W&M Rector Michael Powell and with Vice President Sam Sadler and other administrators in Student Affairs.

Virtual conversations will be underway as Joel Pattison is working with the mStoner team on a short survey to be sent to W&M law students. Patrick and Mark met with some students during their September visit to the School of Law, but they'd like to have the thoughts and impressions of additional students there.

posted by Susan Evans