New Website Preparation

Before starting work on a new website, webpage, or update to a section of a website, here are some questions to consider. Use these as a guide when working with those involved in the website decision making process. The answers to these questions will also be helpful if you plan to work with a member of the IANR Media's web team to design your site or page.

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  1. Why would someone look for this site/page?
    Who is the audience?
  2. How would someone look for this page?
    Are there specific search terms we need to highlight? What other websites in IANR could link to this site/page?
  3. Once they find this site/page, what should they do?
    What do we expect a user to take away? What are the goals of this site/page?
  4. What types of content need to be on this site/page?
    News, faculty, event calendar, forms, etc. Feel free to include examples from other unl.edu sites.
  5. How will the site/page be maintained?
    Who will update it? How often? How will news and events be handled?
  6. How should the site/page flow?
    For pages, what information should be highlighted? For sites, what pages are in the red navigation (up to six across and six down)? Where does this site/page live (ex: under CASNR, as part of a department, etc.)?
  7. How will you measure success?
    Make it as precise as possible. For example: We’ll know the site is successful if we...
    • increase our email signups by 25%.
    • we outrank our competitors in search for the following search terms [...]
    • we increase registrations by 10%
    • traffic increases by 15% (sessions, pageviews or unique pageviews)
    • our publishing frequency reaches at least 10 new pages of content a week
    • over 20 authoritative sites (.gov or .edu) link to our site
    • our site gets mentioned by media outlets
  8. What images and text need to be included?
    Who could we work with to get this information?
  9. Are there examples from other .unl.edu sites that we can reference?
  10. When will this project go live?