Progress...

We’ve just got the end of a really exciting week at YouthNet: things are really progressing.

Essentially there are two streams of work for changing TheSite.org. The master plan is outlined previously; a complete overhaul of everything that we do, changing the functionality, the CMS, the purpose, the whatever… we’re open to changing it.

The second piece of work is a quick-n-dirty update to the design of TheSite.org. Ever since I took up my post a few months back I’ve wanted to put some effort into making the website look more contemporary (in fact, it was even one of the things I outlined in my interview). I’m never quite sure if it’s my brief; but between me and some colleagues in operations and marketing we’ve come up with a plan and been given a chunk of money to play with.

Over the last week and a bit we’ve had four companies come and pitch to do the redesign. The main focus of the redesign is a complete new look to our homepage. Despite less than 5% of visitors arriving via the homepage, it is still our biggest landing page, and consistently in the top five most visited pages. We want it to better reflect the breadth of services and promote what we do. Added to the homepage redesign is a “reskin” of most of the rest of the site – to reflect the new design of the homepage and also take advantage of things like a 1024px width style. For those of you who understand this: this will essentially be putting a new CSS over the existing HTML, although we’ll make a few HTML changes at the same time.

Of the four pitches, two were particularly strong and although it was great going into the last pitch not having to hope they’d be alright, the flipside was it was difficult to choose between the final two. It’s far more difficult to tell someone that you haven’t picked them despite them being good and suitable than turn someone down for significantly missing the mark.

What was great was the pitches were broadly in line with our thinking. I never claim to be a usability or design expert, but I’ve spent enough time involved in worrying about web strategy to understand the basics. And it’s great when someone who makes their living out of understanding this stuff comes to us having had pretty similar thoughts.

The other interesting thing is that we’re not precious about the design. I’m passionate about the purpose of TheSite.org; and I’m proud of the content and the services we provide. But I can’t say I would particularly care to defend the colour scheme or font we use. It was interesting watching some of the people pitching almost apologising for point out things they felt were wrong with the design. As long as they are constructive and with foundation, no-one should feel bad about pointing out where we are going wrong. It’s what we need, and part of the purpose of this blog.

The new design will, all things going to plan, be live by the end of August. I really can’t wait, because the new design will tie-in with some marketing we are doing around the start of the academic year. For all that our content and services are fantastic; they lose credibility if they are badly presented.

You know you work in a good place when you spend Friday afternoon looking forward to Monday so you can get back to moving things forward.

Olly