The Digital Communications Transformation (DCT) strives to take the mystery out of technology, while providing our faculty and staff with easy-to-use tools that better facilitate effective online communication.

PREPARE

1. Familiarize yourself with the online help site
2. Understand the Tiers of Participation
   
3. Determine a preliminary target date for when you would like your website to launch
4. Please note that all sites are required to participate a DCT Orientation in order to have a site build.

DO

1. Request an orientation

Websites are strategy-driven projects. Having the right people involved is essential for planning, content development and site building.

1. Get buy-in from your leadership (no project is a priority without leadership support)
   
2. Identify how you will resource the roles needed for a successful project
   
3. Estimate your time commitment using the readiness planning worksheet (at right)

If you want a website that really works, it's important that your content supports both your organizational goals and your audiences' needs.

PREPARE

1. Read the overview: Business Strategy and Planning
   
2. Take the online training to learn about Understanding Your Strategic and Audience Needs

DO

1. Conduct stakeholder interviews
2. Identify key objectives, missions and core messages (identify what is success)
   
3. Identify and prioritize target audiences and the messages and information they need to understand
4. Develop an audience matrix with message map. Make sure you have incorporated your unit brand messages (see your unit Senior Communicator). 
5. Compile information into a business planning document
6. Circulate to stakeholders (including your local IT support team and your unit Senior Communicator) for final review and endorsement

Assess the current state of your website and any other content you may have. What information does it currently contain and what is the quality of the information?

PREPARE

1. Read the overviews:
   
   • Assessing Your Existing Content
   • Creating a Content Audit
     
2. Take online training to learn how to do a content audit
3. To prepare your ability to audit, we also recommend taking:
   • Writing for the web
   • Writing for the brand

DO

1. Evaluate the integrity (be sure to use usage data from current site)
2. Make qualitative assessments
3. Create a content audit using the example spreadsheet
4. Discuss the outcomes with your team
   • What is the shape your content is in?
   • Will you need new content? Content editing?
     
   • What are your photo and/or video needs?
     
   • Are there databases needed to be included?
     
   • Are there external dependencies that are not to your standards? (e.g. docs, pdfs, videos/YouTube, rss feeds)
   • Have you identified essential functionality needs that do not exist in the UBCMS?

Design a scalable site organization that supports the needs of both your organization and your audiences in a user-friendly and measureable way.

PREPARE

1. Understand how to think about your audience needs
2. Take the online training: Planning your Information Architecture

DO

1. Create a key task document (what are the tasks users need to act on?)
2. If you haven't already, create (or expand upon) your Audience Matrix
3. Identify "birds of a feather" sites in the UBCMS and use their IA as a starting point for organizing your site
   
4. Build out your Information Architecture (IA) in Word, Excel or other outlining software
   
5. Create a "purpose statement" for every section
   
6. Map your existing content to your IA (pages, documents, databases)
7. Make sure when you place content in sections your organization make sense to your audience
8. Take the time to codify the success factors for your content. This will be an invaluable guide for those who are writing the content, and later for those who are doing site production
   
   • What is the purpose this content is fulfilling (if not self evident)
     
   • What are the key tasks for this content to fulfill
   • What are the key messages for this content to support
   • What calls to action should be incorporated
   • Are there any key points this content should touch on
   • Was there any best practices we found from our competition that can inform this content?
     
   • When writing this content, is there a special page layout from an existing site the author should keep in mind

Create content that satisfies your business/organizational needs and the needs of your audiences. You may know what you want to tell your audience, but it is equally important to understand the needs of your audience, which may be very different from what you initially envisioned.

PREPARE

1. Learn how to write content that will resonate with your website visitors
2. Learn how to select strong visuals
   
3. Take the online training: Writing for the web
4. Review the Solutions Group Videos on Understanding and Applying the UB Brand, Content Development, Shared Content and Using Images.

DO

1. Review the content requirements in your information architecture (IA)
2. Identify what visual and written content is needed for your new site
3. Identify opportunities to share content from other sites (saves you from having to create it!)
   
4. Identify who needs to review/sign off on all content
   
5. Prepare your content
   • Update out-of-date content
   • Edit existing content so it aligns with writing for the web best practices
     
   • Create new content 
6. Copyedit all content for grammatical/spelling errors, style, strength of message, clarity, consistency
   
7. Arrange for photos/video to be taken or buy stock images as needed
8. Arrange for reviews and sign offs before content is placed into system
   

Smart sites start early by identifying who will be in charge of stewarding each area of your site, as well as how often pages, facts and stories should be updated.

Prepare

1. Take the online training: Stewarding your site
   
2. Review Solutions Group Videos on Stewardship and Planning

Do 

1. Review the content for your site and be sure it is written in a way (or the topics of visual used) that is sustainable.
   
2. Determine the editorial process for your website (How and when will you update your Web content? Who will update your content?)
3. Determine a strategy for ongoing refinements and evolving your site to align with your business strategy
4. Determine what analytics are important to review, who will review them and how often
5. Be sure your site is set up in a way that leverages shared content and lists (time saver!)
   
6. Codify your stewardship plans for each page in your page properties stewardship tab.

After Launch

1. Review your stewardship report for tasks and updates monthly.
2. Assign and execute.

Once you have created and remediated your content, get training on how to use the UB Content Management System (UBCMS).

1. Review your Roles and Resourcing document to identify staff that require UBCMS training
   
2. Have your staff take the online training courses
   
3. Have your staff attend a hands-on training session or take the self-paced training.
4. Familiarize yourself with a wide variety of DCT Soltutions Group Trainings available which will take your knowledge of using the tool to the next step.

1. Enter your information architecture into the UBCMS (keeping UB core content, such as Our Campuses, etc.)
2. Make certain your content is optimized for the web
   
3. Use existing DCT live sites for ideas and inspiration on page layouts
4. Be sure to use lists and shared content to minimize your stewardship impact, including university-wide and authoritative shared content.
5. Read the documentation carefully, it helps you set things up right the first time.
6. Be sure to copyedit and proofread your work.
7. Integrate outside databases  [if applicable]
8. When you are done walk through every page and every link.
9. Before you submit your site for optimization it needs to be done.  Make sure to hide any pages you do not intend to activate or are not ready for review.
10. If you see you are not making your deadline, please contact the DCT Help Desk to reschedule as soon as possilbe.

1. Review the site optimization process
2. UC will review and optimize your site based on the level of support

1. Review the site activation process
2. Test your website
3. UC will coordinate with the UB Information Technology (UBit) teams involved with the technical aspects of launching your website

Launching your website requires the coordination of multiple teams within CIT. This usually takes three to four weeks, so please plan accordingly.

Once your site is live, it will be added to our Live DCT Websites on the UBCMS Home Page.