Nurturing your website

Many years ago the world of website providers seemed to divide into:

• those who had a technical focus – with the driving force being about coding, small bandwidth requirements (in the days when that really mattered!) and lots of words

• those with a design focus – with an artistic vision involving lots of beautiful moving flash images and a concept.

But today arts organisations and their customers are seeking ever more sophisticated Internet offerings with rich content, back stories and comprehensive real time ticketing, and we require a longer list of competences from website producers. Responsible for creating those vitally important windows to our organisations, they need to be:

• technically adroit

• knowledgeable about the implications of the Disability Discrimination Act and Data Protection Act

• able to interpret our brand requirements

• on top of the latest trends in social media.

Not only this, but they also need to be able to link the website to a fully flexible Content Management System and integrate it seamlessly with our ticketing systems. Oh, and they must be great project managers too.

This tall order explains why the cost of new websites has been increasing. The range and depth of impact required also means that considerable resources have to be dedicated internally to engage and chose a supplier, and consider their proposals. Internal project management can be challenging too. When someone asks an organisation “which department ‘owns’ your website” you may be told about the cross-organisational remit and the whole organisation involvement. However, all too often this ultimately boils down to the marketing team generating most of the copy, most of the images and providing the main motivation and drive to keep the website developing and up to date.

Whist this approach has the advantage of being simple to manage and quick to implement, it is in danger of missing the point. Research tells us that our audiences want to feel involved and included in their leisure experiences and we are keen to keen to seek alternative sources of funding – like asking people to make a donation at the point of sale. Perhaps the payback for turning to our audiences for funding and seeking their trust and engagement is that we let them into our world more. A website is the perfect platform for lifting the veil and revealing the huge range of skills, effort and passion which go into their experience. We have moved into a depth of engagement way beyond the chief executive’s introduction in the front of the brochure. And everyone in the organisation has a part to play in this – with marketing positioned as the conduit.

Choosing a new website provider can act as an excellent catalyst to revisit the whole organisation engagement – and resources required to develop it (both money and staff time) certainly justify considerable thought. So how should you go about choosing your website provider?

• Look upon the whole process as seeking a long-term business partner, rather than purely a supplier. In procurement terms you are embarking upon a performance purchase, rather than a conformance purchase, i.e. you are not going to specify exactly what code and screen designs must be used; instead you are concerned with the outcome.

• How long do you expect it to last and what changes are you going to make along the way? Set a realistic life for your website, and consider what scale of enhancements you can afford each year (be aware that you will want some!)

• What matters most to you (cost, delivery timescale, reliability, functionality)? There is an old project management rule that there are only three flexible elements to any project: resources (people & money); timescale; and scope. The difficulty is in balancing these.

• How risk averse are you? Are you prepared to consider a newer emerging company, or would your organisation work better with an experienced company?

• What ticketing system are you using? Different ticketing systems make very different demands upon web integrators and you should consider the relevant experience of potential providers. Clearly, talking to other customers who have the same ticketing system as you will be invaluable.

• Who needs to make the final decision? Sometimes web developers can spend considerable time and effort approaching a potential client’s requirements from a particular angle, only to discover late in the day that one key decision-maker has a different agenda.

• ‘What would success look like?’ Setting out clearly at the start what the success factors are, will ensure that web developers are able to focus their attentions. It may also be that with relatively little thought, specific Key Performance Indicators can be established. Google Analytics enables you to monitor length of visit, % of returning visitors, number of visitors who follow a particular path through your website etc. in a few keystrokes.

Taking the time to answer these questions before you make the decision about who to approach and appoint to work on your web presence will pay dividends in the end. If you nurture your relationship with your website producer, you will get the support you need for your journey into a future of ever-changing technologies.
 

Eight things every chief executive should know about their ticketing system. Read ‘Box Office Blues’ by Beth Aplin, in ArtsProfessional online