Website Development

Overview

This document explains the Information Design process that supports the GSU community in creating or updating their online presence. Information Design Services will:

• Assess your business goals and your site’s primary message
• Assess your current content and identify new content
• Develop the information architecture and a content strategy
• Assist in the publication of the new site, focusing on Search Engine Optimization best practices

Developing a Website with Information Design Services

We consult on three areas related to university web sites:

• The organization and structure of your online materials (Information Architecture)
• How well the site will work for your intended audience (Usability)
• How successful your site is in accomplishing your goals (Reporting)

We’ll advise you on how best to combine or separate content, how to label that content, and how best to present the content based on standard practices and task management. Upon our first meeting, whether or not you have a website, we will be primarily interested in 3 things:

• What you want users to accomplish with your site
• What your institutional / business goals are with the site
• What content you have and what content you foresee developing

General Steps from Initial Contact to “Go-live”

1. We meet with you and your stakeholders (where appropriate) to:
   • discuss goals of site (top priorities of owner and top user tasks)
   • discuss content and ownership of content areas
2. You take formal inventory of your current and projected content, assess it for owner and user goals, and submit your content inventory to us
3. We develop the Information Architecture (IA) using, in large part, your content inventory and present you with a site map
4. You sign-off on the site map or request changes
5. Either you or we build the structure of your new site (requires OpenText account and training)
   NOTE: If we build your site, you approve it or request changes
6. You complete the site by creating and connecting all content (text, graphics, downloads, etc)
7. We meet to finalize the project and to discuss the final implementation or migration of your site (redirects, keywords and aliases, archiving the old site)
8. We do a final check to ensure the site is meeting the goals we established in the initial meeting. Once that is complete, we either make recommendations for improvement or give you the go-ahead to make the site live
9. You submit a ticket to the IS&T Help Center when you are ready for the site to go live