Redesigning a website

A site redesign of the scale requires strong leadership and coordination. This project stakeholders included almost the entire senior staff. The executive sponsor was the Executive and Artistic Director. There were a number of vendors involved, including the company who provided ticket sales and fundraising services. We were installing a new content management system. We had separate vendors for design and implementation. I knew that managing all the various stakeholder needs and coordination and communication would be crucial to success.

​

Another critical aspect of a project of this scope is managing expectations. The prospect of a website redesign conjures boundless optimism, ambition, and blue sky thinking, which plays its own role in success, but as constraints and resource limitations enter the picture, the name of the game is making sure everyone understands and agrees on the direction. ​

​

This project was to unfold over more than a year, from the beginning of the planning process to launch. The first task was initial alignment on the scope, which we accomplished with targeted vision statements that I co-created with key stakeholders. It was important to me that the stakeholders have some skin in the game, to help with their buy-in later on. We also completed some visual explorations.

​

Once we had a common understanding of the big picture, we established a working group with representatives of all the departments that would meet weekly. We reported on status but also worked through some questions. For example, one challenge for non-profit performing arts organizations is to balance ticket sales and fundraising. Both are critical, and the way they are handled on the website together makes the difference between success and missed goals. In recent times conventions have settled, but at the time of this redesign we decided to explore different options. It turned into an ongoing discussion through the design phase.

​

As all this was going on, I coordinated the actives of the vendors and served as liaison for decision making among stakeholders. The design agency started with information architecture and a home page design direction. Afterward, to expedite the process and save on costs, I rolled up my sleeves to develop many templates for sub-pages like subscriptions, different fundraising pages, and more.

​

With the project under full swing I started publishing a newsletter to communicate our progress and acclimate staff to the idea of the new website.

​

As the pieces of the solution came into place — ticketing and fundraising integrations underway, the content management system selected and installed, and templates built — it was time to finalize and install content. I had coordinated with departments to amass webpage copy and images, working in spreadsheets. Now the task became using that to populate web pages, which because of resource constraints was going to be a manual process. We enlisted help from some department members, but I also arranged to bring on a few contractors, trained them and set up processes to coordinate their work. To help with this, I created a guide on how to use the system, which could be used going forward for colleagues.

 

The last step was QA. We set up a ticket system and triage process to channel feedback and provide transparency into the decisions. Within a few weeks, we had worked through enough of the issues that we were ready for launch.