Guidelines for Implementing and Expanding Your Online Community

Creating a Site Development Plan Guidelines for Implementing and Expanding your Online Community

Use this document to create a plan for driving the future management and expansion of your online community. Although the document contains terminology specific to NetCommunity®, the concepts and fundamental functions can be applied to your organization’s online system.

The best practices we’ve included form a conservative approach to site development that allows adequate time for workload adjustments and resource scheduling.

This document is divided into the following sections, each representing a stage in site development:

General Guidelines

When creating your site development plan, take into account the following:

 Your organization’s online/communications strategy and how your online system fits into this. This includes your organization’s policies for engaging with supporters online and the handling of personal data.

 Your goals for the site, for example those related to online fundraising, learning about and engaging with your supporters, and encouraging them to network with one another. Your goals might also include numerical measures of success, such as “1,000 new online donors by end of this fiscal year”.

 Availability of staff time and resources to reach your these goals.

 Product and system capabilities (and limitations). This includes the ability of your onsite/offsite network architecture to handle what you are asking of it.

 Resources and provision for regular administrative tasks, including the monitoring of end user experience and system troubleshooting.

Launch/Health Check

Best practices At the time a site is launched, be it through publicizing the address of the site or providing a link from another site, it must be ready to receive visitor traffic with content that is error- free, relevant and just enough to spark the interest of repeat visitors.

Creating a Site Development Plan If a site is already live and its development is being considered for the first time, priorities during a health check will be to review usability, ensure key pathflows are error free and content is up to date.

Complete the table below for all content that the site will launch with or key tasks that need to be accomplished as part of a site health check, whichever is applicable.

Under New Content list the pages and features that your site will launch with. In the ‘Content/Parts’ column list the individual components of the new features.

Example (NetCommunity): Area/Page Content/Parts New Content User Profile Form Part  Profile Page  Biographical  Address  Spouse  User Account User Interests Part  Populate Interests Attribute Table in Raiser’s Edge  Select Table values to enable in form

Under Maintenance & Usability list the items you need to take care of to check that key content and user pathflows are error free. Under Integration list those elements of New Content that will impact downloading of information to Raiser’s Edge (or other integrated system). For example, when building and testing a new User Profile Form Part in NetCommunity you’ll also need to test the downloading of a profile update into Raiser’s Edge and make sure that staff responsible for downloading transactions understand the changes that will be made to their processes.

LAUNCH/HEALTH CHECK Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details

Creating a Site Development Plan 1-3 Months

Best practices Within the first 3 months of launching a site, staff time and resources are likely to be dominated by day to day management of new user registrations and processing transactions in Raiser’s Edge. During this time, development of the site can focus on enabling some of the parts/features that are easier to build and expanding on existing content.

If your site is already live the first quarter of development focuses on analyzing site activity and testing and enabling new content.

List below the items planned for the first 1-3 months. For example, maintenance and usability might include checking that new user pathflows are still functioning correctly after launch. Analysis will include making use of your programs reporting functions. For example, in NetCommunity you will set up a page where you can place and view the Web Traffic Reports part.

1 – 3 MONTHS Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details Analysis Task   Details

Creating a Site Development Plan 3-6 Months

Best practices Within 6 months of launching the site or performing a health check, the daily tasks necessary to manage it should have settled to reasonable levels, freeing up staff time and resources to develop the content and maintain its ‘fresh’ appearance for repeat visitors. This is a good time to start building targeted content for different roles of site visitor, as a fair number of users should now be registered on the site.

An easy way to keep the site fresh is to keep homepage content up to date. For example, in NetCommunity by swapping out an existing Poll for a new one and updating news headlines in a Formatted Text & Images part.

This is also a good time to revisit your Privacy Policy to make sure it is up to date and takes into account any new site features that involve gathering user data. For example, if you’re building and testing a donation form during this quarter, make sure the site’s published Privacy Policy tells donors what happens to the information they provide.

3 – 6 MONTHS Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details Analysis Task   Details

Creating a Site Development Plan 6-9 Months

Best practices Within 9 months after site launch, efforts can be focused on refining existing content, such as donation forms for different groups of visitors and expanding the use of Targeted Content on the homepage. Targeted content and tailored donation forms can be developed at this time to customize the experience of different types of logged in site visitors.

Within 6-9 months of a site health check, larger scale development can be tested and implemented, such as the rolling out of a Membership form or Personal Pages. These parts can take considerable time to implement. If planned and built at 6 months you could expect the content to be live by 9 months.

6 – 9 MONTHS Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details Analysis Task   Details

Creating a Site Development Plan 9-12 Months

Best practices By the end of the first year of your website’s launch, you will be likely needing to assess its progress and measure its success rather than developing content. This goes for sites one year after a health check as well. You’ll be keen to measure the success of your site compared to a year ago and plan development for the upcoming year.

Besides ongoing maintenance of homepage content, Targeted Content and the Privacy Policy, the web traffic and email reports become particularly useful at this time for gauging the usage and performance of your site. Draw site traffic information from your administrator page reports and Google Analytics to analyze the success of your site after its first year of activity. Identifying which areas of your site attracted the most attention will help inform your plans for site development in the coming year.

Disable any content that is now out of date, for example removing links to pages about Events that have been and gone and update news headlines to report on the success of completed events. Do not delete content from Site Explorer that will be helpful as a reference when creating content for new events in the upcoming year.

9 – 12 MONTHS Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details Analysis Task   Details

Creating a Site Development Plan 12-18 Months

Best practices A year after launching the site, you may find that a new product version has been released that will provide useful functionality for you. You can also take advantage of putting to use the skills gained in site management to build out existing unused content. For example, in NetCommunity this could be User Networking, Document sharing, Giving Histories and Directories. These parts really benefit from having at least several hundred active site users, hence it can be wise to wait until the site is mature before developing them.

Review product updates to identify what must be implemented and those updates which enable new site enhancements and functionality. Also review your existing content and identify which parts not currently in use may enhance pages or provide you with useful data from site visitors.

12–18 MONTHS Area/Page Content/Parts New Content Item/Part  Page  Details Item/Part  Details Item/Part  Details Maintenance & Usability Task  Key Task  Details Task  Details Task  Details Integration Task  Key Task  Details Analysis Task   Details

Finally, during this time also revise and update this plan, scheduling development for the coming year. Make sure that maintenance and administrative tasks are included at regular intervals to avoid crises and keep your site humming smoothly.

Originally prepared by Heller Consulting, Inc. Heller Consulting requests that this document not be shared with other organizations or posted to public forums. For the benefit of your organization, this document is open to editing. However, any changes made to this document after original development may not necessarily reflect the recommendations of Heller Consulting.

Creating a Site Development Plan