Making Websites Accessible
5 How to plan your website
You have decided your organisation needs a website - so where do you go from here? A website that is accessible but has no interesting information or services is, presumably, not what you will be working towards. Therefore, this guide covers the basic processes needed to help get you started building your site.
Put someone in charge
Getting a website designed, built and maintained is not a simple task. It requires good management skills in order to co-ordinate the project, and considerable understanding of what the organisation wants to achieve and what barriers exist to achieving its aims. Therefore it makes sense to find a single person who can lead the entire process.
The ideal person is someone with enough ‘clout’ to have the full support of management - and enough knowledge of the details of how the organisation works to ensure the correct information goes on the site. He/she should be responsible for managing the entire process: organising meetings; clarifying the aims and design of the website; finding, employing and supervising a web designer; and liaising with all those involved in the project.
Clarify your aims and objectives
All of the most important decisions about website design are taken before a single page is published.
This section is designed to help you make those vital early decisions. A bad website, i.e. one that frustrates visitors because they can’t find what they are looking for, or stretches their patience because it is too slow to download - will do your organisation more harm than good. It is better to have no website at all than a website that shows your organisation in a bad light.
Here are a few questions you will need to answer:
- Why do we need a website?
- Who will the website be aimed at?
- What are the needs of the particular audience/s?
- How much time do we have to maintain it?
- Will staff be given extra time and training to work on the site?
- How will the success or failure of the website be measured?
- What are the features we like about websites
- What are the features we don’t like?
- How will we encourage ownership of the site within our organisation?
- Who will design the website?
- What is meant by an accessible website?
- How do we ensure our website is accessible?
Bring together an appropriate group of people within your organisation to discuss the above questions. Write down the main points of the discussion as well as any conclusions reached during the meeting. You will want to start with the most important question: why do we want a website? Doing the exercise as a group should help build a feeling of ownership of the resulting website.
To clarify the aims of your website attempt to write a single paragraph that explains the following:
- who you are
- what the site is for
- what information/services should be found on the site.
Remember, if you don’t know what your website is for, don’t expect any of your visitors to know either.
Identify your target audience and their needs
Next you need to think about who you expect to use your website; who is the main audience for your information/services? Don’t work on the assumption that it is for everybody - this is too broad and, if you adopt this approach, your site is likely to appeal to nobody. People surfing the web are usually looking for answers to specific questions - so think, why should they visit your site?
Think about your site in terms of what needs it will meet for your intended audience. Look at a wide range of other websites and ask yourself what is good or bad about them.
Perhaps the single most important thing you can do is ask your potential audience what they want to see on your website and involve them in the planning and delivery process. For tips on how to involve disabled people in the process read SAIF’s Standards for Disability Information and Advice Provision in Scotland (Section 6.4 ‘Strategies for Involving Disabled People and their Representatives’ is particularly relevant).
Once you have identified your target audience, but before you start to build your site, ask yourself these fundamental questions:
- Do the people I am aiming at have access to the web?
- Are they likely to use the web to access my service/information?
Perhaps putting up a website is not the best strategy for meeting the needs of your intended audience. Maybe another year is needed before those you are aiming at are ‘hooked up’ and sufficiently comfortable using the web to access your information or services.
Gather the content together
Once you know what your site is for, who your target audience is, and the needs of that audience, you are then in a position to start gathering information to put on to your website. Always remember that the information you choose to put on to your website should directly meet the needs of your audience.
To start with write down everything that you think should be on your site, including any features like discussion forums, feedback forms or guestbooks. Divide the information you end up with into categories. Give each category a short name - these names may later form the sections within your website. Think about how you might organise these categories on your site. Popular organisational schemes include: alphabetical, time-based, geographical, subject-based, audience-based or metaphor-driven. Examples of these organisational schemes:
- Alphabetical schemes: phone directory
- Time-based: television or radio guide
- Geographical: holiday guide
- Subject-based: university syllabus
- Audience-based: a conference website with sections for exhibitors, press and visitors
- Metaphor-driven: road signs
Pick what you think is the best organisational scheme for your site and for your particular audience. Give some thought to this because you will need a system that will be able to accommodate the future growth of your site as well as its initial content.
Some content should be on all websites, e.g. contact information, a map to get to your premises if required, details about when individual pages were last updated.
Create an outline for your website
You should now have the content and a scheme, or a mixture of schemes that form the basis of your website. To organise that content within the scheme, draw out the structure of your website on paper. Think about what is the most important information for your intended audience - and make sure that it will be easy to find. Group similar information together (i.e. you want to have an ‘About Us’ section containing information about the aims of your organisation, a map, annual reports, address information etc.) Group all your services at one physical location on the page (discussion, search, classified ads, jobs etc.) and access to your content/information on another.
Think about whether you want to have links to everything on your front page or just a few links representing top-level topics - each leading to several related topics.
Promote ownership of the website within your organisation
Once your website is online that is just the start of your work - now you want to keep it fresh by updating it regularly with new material. Assuming most of this new material will be produced by staff within your organisation you are likely to need motivated, trained staff eager to contribute to the site.
If your aim is to build a useful and regularly updated website ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the idea of having a website have the full support of everyone in the organisation?
- Are staff/management/directors already experienced users of the web?
- Is there a culture that sees the web as a valuable and core research/information tool?
- Do staff have access to the web from their desks?
- Will staff be given the responsibility to update their own sections of the website?
- Will staff have the technical means to update the website (i.e. a site management system)?
- What are the procedures in place to update the website?
- Is updating centralised and done by one person or decentralised to the various staff members themselves?
- What are the policies, if any, that relate to updating information on the website?
- Does everything have to be checked and passed by one person before it can go live? If so does the designated person have the time to do this - and are there targets for ‘turnaround’?
- Will the staff be given appropriate training?
If all of the above conditions are met you are in an ideal situation to operate a successful website. And you are probably unique, because such a scenario is unlikely to be the norm in most organisations. You may first have to look at how you can make more effective use of the web within your organisation - and develop a culture where the web is seen as a legitimate and valuable communication and research tool; as vital as the telephone or the fax. The closer you can get to this ideal the better.
Motivated, trained staff who have instant access to the web on their desktops is conducive to a situation where they will feel part of the process and be eager to contribute to the site. Familiarity with the technology involved and a belief that the web can help them to reach their target audience will also help.
Adopt the right attitude
Your website should be able to stand alone - don't think of the web as an advertisement for your offline activities - if possible provide the fulls service online. Don't tell people of the interesting and useful documents and articles you can send them by post, provide the full text of those documents on the site so that your visitors can read or print them themselves. Don't ask visitors to your site to phone for further information, by the time a potential customer is offline he/she will probably have forgotten all about your organisation and your products or services – remember that e-mail is the natural way of communicating on the web.
Working through the above tasks is not quick or easy but it is worth the initial effort; apart from helping you to build a useful website, it should also help to establish commitment from those involved in the site at an early stage.