4site studios new website content plan

4Site Website Redesign Content PlanProject: 4Site Studios Rebrand

Prepared For: 4Site Studios Staff

Prepared By: Riche Zamor, Director of Strategy

Last Update: May 21, 2013

Summary4Site Interactive Studios seeks to redesign their existing website to better communicate the capabilities and experience of the agency. In the

first quarter of 2013, we have undergone an agency rebrand with the goal of positioning ourselves as a top-tier digital creative agency that

specializes in work with the nonprofit sector. Although the website, is not our primary marketing tool, going forward it will act as the base

from which we build brand awareness and lead generation through digital communications.

In order to increase brand awareness and lead generation, we plan to redesign and redevelop the existing website to better showcase our

new brand; demonstrate the extent of our creative abilities; and provide more information about our project successes and processes to

aid organizations in deciding whether 4Site will make a good strategic partner.

4Site Interactive Studios Website Redesign Content Plan | 1

Business Goals

As outlined in our marketing plan, we have set three high level goals for 2013:

1. Position 4Site as a top-tier digital creative agency working with the nonprofit sector

2. Increase lead generation

3. Deepen client engagement to increase recurring business

Please reference the 4Site Studios 2013 Marketing & Communications Plan for more details.

Project Goals

In order for the 4Site Studios website to be a tool in helping us reach our 2013 business goals and objectives, we will need to accomplish

the following:

Goal Recommendation Priority

Communicate our new brand purpose and pillars throughthe website

Redesign the website based on our new brand; seed thenew site with our new brand slogan and key messages

High

Produce new content to better communicate our capabilitiesas an integrated digital creative agency

Rewrite content from new brand voice; let our work speakfor the level of service we offer; provide better descriptionsof our services and how they work together

High

Change the architecture of the website markup for better Improve page markup within theme templates; consistently High


search indexing use alt text and titles for images; consistently use metadataacross website content; use metadata to optimize contentfor sharing on social platforms

Improve the information architecture so users are findingkey content quicker and easier

Streamline navigation into a single menu; removeunnecessary pages from the site navigation; use moredescriptive, personable navigation nomenclature

High

Change calls-to-action to improve click throughs to keylanding pages

Use unique and descriptive calls-to-action for everymarquee banner on the website

High

Improve visual representation of content to increase clickthroughs

Change project teaser images on the website to images ofour work, which yield higher clicks than images of icons orlogos; use color images to draw people’s eye to content;strategically use images to direct a user’s eye tocalls-to-action on the website; where possible, replace textwith visuals to minimize the time a user needs to spendconsuming content before taking action

Medium

Increase the number of pages visited per visit and amountof time spent on pages

Show users content topically related to the page a visitor isviewing; increase use of photo galleries, videos, andembedded documents within content pages

Medium

Better showcase our thought leadership content Decrease the number of items in our portfolio to highlightonly case studies of our best work; highlight blog poststhroughout the website that we are proudest of and aremost popular

Medium

Improve social media integration Change configuration of social share buttons to displaynative like/share icons; showcase our social media presencein a more prominent and visually attractive way; possibly

Low


aggregate posts from social networks other than Twitter

Improve upon interactive features of the website Change commenting system to a 3rd-party service with abetter user experience; provide an easier way for users tosign up for our email list; create other ways for visitors tointeract with us, like downloading thought leadershipdocuments, etc.

Low


Website AudienceOur target market consists of two client bases: medium-to-large size nonprofit organizations and social businesses, and small-to-medium

size PR and advertising agencies that have a small or no digital practice in-house. Within these organizations, we seek to reach decision

makers who can allocate budgets to projects and either decide on, or play a key role in choosing, partner agencies.

Audience ProfilesBelow are high-level profiles of the type of organizations we intend to target our content to. As a B2B business, our target audiences are

other organizations made up of many types of people. To that end, we will focus on creating content that will appeal to the broader

audience making up these organizations with the goal of specifically reaching decision makers further defined in our user personas below.

Social Orgs. and Businesses Agencies

Type/Focus Environment, Science and Technology, Health, Education,Community Development, Arts/Cultural, Issue Advocacy

Public relations, advertising, or direct mail, with afocus on public affairs, cause or social marketing

Mission Progressive-focus Progressive-focus

Size Varies Varies

Annual Revenue $5MM+/yr Varies

Location Northeast & Mid-Atlantic Northeast & Mid-Atlantic

Examples American Cancer Society, Conservation International,Care2, Smithonian

CommunicationWorks, Levick Communications,HagerSharp


User Personas

Jessica FreeportDirector of Online Communications,

Environment Defenders of America

Age: 29Location: Alexandria, VA

Bio:

Jessica Freeport is the Director of Online Communications for Environment Defenders of America (EDA). Jessica has over ten years of

experience in the environment movement, driving organizational growth and legislative change through effective communications strategy,

media outreach, and social media. Prior to joining Environment Defenders of America, Jessica served on the communications teams of a

number of local and national environmental organizations helping them to integrate their online and offline communications to gain

influencer support and drive supporters to take action.

Jessica, as many digital strategists in the nonprofit sector, is an accidental techie. She stumbled into blogging while managing

communications and media outreach for Friends of the Rose Kennedy Parkway. Since then, she has leveraged her background in social

media and knack for gaining influencer support to bring about legislation change on many key environmental issues.

Situation:

Jessica has been frustrated with the EDA website, and her job, for quite some time. She inherited a system that was built by the former

technology director over six years ago, and it has not been updated since. Her boss is reluctant to allocate budget for redeveloping the

website, although her and her team feel the current system is costing the organization valuable man-hours.


User Need Statements:

“ I am so ****ing frustrated with this website! I wish we could just rebuild this thing so I don’t have to spend so much time replicating work

in multiple places.”

“ She doesn’t get it! She doesn’t have to deal with this everyday. How can I show her that we can save time and money by redeveloping the

website.”

Motivators:

● Frustration with the current system

● Need for improving efficiency in content administration

● Gain (further) trust and respect of colleagues, especially

senior leadership

Depressors:

● Lack of trust/support from senior leadership

User Behavior:

Goals Key Actions

Get approval of a budget for redesigning the EDA website Search for web development project guides; seek advice fromprofessional network

Write an RFP for redesign/redevelopment of the website Search for RFP’s online; request RFP advice/guides on listserves;seek advice from professional network

Find a vendor for the project Ask colleagues and friends for a reference; Google search foragencies that specialize in working with nonprofits; requestrecommendations from industry listserves; search throughindustry vendor lists


Solicit proposals Call/email desired agencies about project; send RFP out overindustry listserves; post RFP to organization website

Select a vendor Call/read references; review vendors’ past work; askfriends/professional network about agencies

Desired User Interaction:

In descending order, we would like this user to do the following:

1. Contact us to engage their organization in developing a strategy and development plan for their new website, which will lead to

development of the website by us or development of an RFP

2. Send us a project RFP developed by the organization’s staff or another consultant, requesting we submit a proposal

3. Subscribe to our email list or download a white paper/case study to learn more about what we do and our approach


Dave ZimmermanVP of Digital Strategy,

Merritt Communications

Age: 36Location: Washington, DC

Bio:

David Zimmerman is a pioneer in the use of social media for cause marketing. David played a critical role in the development of the Pepsi

Refresh Project, and has advised Fortune 500 companies and Philanthropy 400 organizations on the strategic use of social media to build

awareness or change perception of their brand.

Previous to joining Merritt Communications, David worked as an Account Director at Powell Tate Social Impact, and previous to that as an

Account Supervisor on Edelman Digital’s Public Affairs team.

David hales from Michigan, where he received his BA in Communications from University of Michigan Ann Harbor. He then moved to

Cambridge, MA, where he received an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

When not working, David can be found training for a crossfit competition, debating policy with his buddies on the Hill, or exploring new

restaurants DC has to offer.

Situation:

David joined Merritt Communications because he saw the opportunity to take a leadership role within a reputable PR agency founding their

digital practice. He is the first person to be hired to focus exclusively on digital. He will have the assistance of a few Account Executives who


have an interest in social media, but no full-time junior staff will be hired until the agency can bring in additional work. He needs to hire a

firm that he can turn to when he needs to develop websites, apps, or digital content/assets for client projects.

User Need Statements:

“I kind of miss being able to walk down the hall and talk to a tech team when I just need to get stuff done quickly.”

“ Jane and Will are awesome, but I need someone who knows more about digital to just bounce some ideas off of once and awhile.”

Motivators:

● Growing an award-winning digital practice

● Impressing his colleagues and senior leadership

Depressors:

● Being the only person with a background in online

communications within the agency

● Lack of larger-scale digital projects

User Behavior:

Goals Key Actions

Find a creative/development shop he can outsource productionwork to

Pull from relationships he has with past vendors; ask professionalnetwork for recommendations; Google search small digitalagencies in the area


Desired User Interaction:

In descending order, we would like this user to do the following:

1. Contact us about to being a long-term strategic partner for his agency

2. Send us a RFP for a client project, requesting we submit a proposal


Messaging Hierarchy & Framework


Information Architecture

AnalysisAfter performing a thorough analysis of the current 4Site website analytics, we were able to gain a few valuable insights into the ways

visitors currently use our site:

General:

● Users follow our navigation left-to-right through the navigation, with about 20% drop-off as users click from page to page

● People are not scrolling far down our pages, especially on the homepage, so key content needs to be above the fold

● No one visits our website to access our client portal

● People are not clicking on the link to sign up for our email list, we may need to expose the form to generate signups

● We make very little use of taxonomy on the website, so we have no data on how this may impact pageviews or time on site

Homepage:

● Very few people click on the slides in our slideshow to access pages, they defer to the main navigation

● Less than 4% of people click on a link below the slideshow

● People are not clicking to slide through our portfolio items on the homepage, and only visiting items that display when they hit the

homepage

● In the portfolio section, people are mostly clicking on images of websites, not images of logos

Portfolio:

● Very few people click to expand the groupings of projects on our portfolio page

Services:

● Page receives the highest bounce rate of any landing page on the website


Blog:

● Our blog page gets very little traffic

○ People typically visit individual posts they discover through search

● Visitors typically do not visit other content after reading a blog post

RecommendationsGiven these discoveries, we should streamline the site navigation into one main navigation ordered based on page popularity and

relevance to user need - portfolio, services, about us, blog then contact us. By doing this we are putting the content needs of our target

users first, allowing them to quickly access what they are looking for and make a quick decision about our agency.

We also want to make better use of content as a way to direct people to key pages and posts on the website. Visual banners with specific

calls-to-action can be just as powerful a tool in directing traffic as our streamlined navigation, but provide us with the opportunity to have

an explicit ask for each person who clicks through to that page.


Website Navigation


Annotations:

1. The features project page should contain filters for project type and cause

2. The service pages should display related content from Our Insights and Portfolio, as well as contain a webform so clients can contact

us about our services

3. Our insights will be a collection of various content types with filters for content type, topic, etc.


Taxonomy Schema

4Site’s new website will leverage a shared taxonomy structure that will power a lightweight content recommendation engine. We will tie

key content types - blog posts, projects, and resources - together based on the following vocabularies:

Vocabulary Description Example Terms Type of Field

Topic Shared vocabulary across all

blog posts, resources and

projects; should allow selection

of multiple topics on any of

these content types, but no

freetagging

NTEN Conference, DrupalCon

2013, Content As Media

Webinar Series

Multiselect

Client Should contain an image field

for attaching client logos and a

field for Cause

NetCentric Campaigns, National

Building Museum, Say Yes to

Education

Single

Cause Description of the type or cause

we were working for

Advocacy, Science and

Technology, Advocacy

Multiselect

Resource Type Descriptive taxonomy White Paper, Case Study, Single


describing the contents of each

resource node

Tutorial Video


Page Inventory

Below is a description of the major pages of the website, as outlined in the sitemap above.

## New Page Purpose Content/Page Type Source Content New? Note

0.0 Homepage Communicate our

primary message of

being an integrated

agency and direct

people to key

landing pages

View N/A Y

1.0 Our Work Present a gallery of

the various projects

we have completed

for clients

View http://4sitestudios.co

m/portfolio

M Only 8-12 projects should be

featured

1.1 Case Studies Highlight case

studies from the

work we have done

with clients


m/portfolio

M

1.1.x Projects Describe the

solution we

provided for a

Project http://4sitestudios.co

m/portfolio

M


particular client’s

need

1.2 Clients Display a listing of

our clients

View Y This view will pull from the

client taxonomy

2.0 What We Do List our various

service areas with

descriptions of each


m/services

Y

2.1 Strategy Describe our

strategy services

and display related

work

Basic Page http://4sitestudios.co

m/services

Y The webform on this page will

be a standard webform block

added to all of Services pages

2.2 Design Describe our design

services and display

related work


m/services




2.3 Video Describe our video


related work


m/services




2.4 Development Describe our

development


related work


m/services





2.5 Services-on-

Demand

Describe how we

offer fast-delivery

services for small

projects through

our client support

packages


m/support




3.0 Products Landing page

describing our

various product

offerings

Webform N/A Y

3.1 Hub CMS Detail our

distribution of

Drupal

Webform Y

3.2 Dub Player Detail our custom

video player

product

Webform Y

4.0 Who We Are Give an overview of

the agency and

what we do

Basic page http://4sitestudios.co

m/about-us

Y

4.1 About 4Site Give the history of

the company

Basic page N/A Y


4.2 Our Team Show a listing of all

the staff at the

agency


m/about-us

Y

4.2.x Staff Bios Give a detailed

description of a

team member’s

experience

Bio http://4sitestudios.co

m/about-us

Y

4.3 Our Process Describe how we

work with clients

Basic page N/A Y

4.4 Giving Back Outline our

contributions to the

nonprofit and open

source community

Basic page N/A Y

5.0 Our Insights Showcase our

thought leadership

content


m/blog

N

6.0 Hire Us Allow people to

contact us about

particular projects

Webform http://4sitestudios.co

m/contact

M

7.0 SERP Display search

results

View N


Content Structure

Below is a description of the types of content that will be published on the new 4Site website, taxonomies that will be used to organize

content, and metadata that should be used to optimize content for SEO. The below recommendations are derived from the content needs

defined in and discovered through our website audit, personas, and recommended information architecture.

Content Types

The following content types will be used to represent content that 4Site will publish to the redesigned website:

Content Type Description Field Taxonomy Notes

Basic Page Page containing static

content

● Title

● Body

● Attachment

Blog Post Informal posts to share

our latest thinking or

current affairs within the

company and industry

● Title

● Banner Image

● Body

● Video Embed

● Attachment

● Service Reference

● Topic

Client Represents data about ● Client Name ● Cause


clients that will be

referenced on Project

nodes and other content

types

● Logo

Project Describes various client

projects we have

completed

● Project Name

● Project Slideshow

Images

● Project Video

● Short Description

● Client Reference

● Client Testimonial

● Challenge

● Challenge

Thumbnail

● Our Solution

● Solution

Thumbnail

● The Results

● Results Thumbnail


● Topic

● Cause

There should be either a

slideshow or a video, not

both.

Service Represents the services

we offer to clients

● Service

● Service Icon

● Service

Description


● Capabilities (Field

Group)

○ Capability

Title

○ Capability

Image

○ Capability

Description

● Form

Resource Displays whitepapers,

case studies, reports, and

any other downloadable

thought leadership

content we produce

● Title

● Body

● Attachment

● Embedded Media

(Youtube, Vimeo,

Slideshare)


● Resource Type

● Topic

● Client

● Cause

Should have the option

require o require people

complete a form before

completing the

Bio Gives a detailed

description of the work

experience of the team

● Name

● Title

● Bio

● Fun Fact

● Cover Photo

● Social Media

Profiles

○ Twitter


○ Linkedin


Webform Allows us to create

custom online forms for

landing pages

● Title

● Body


Microcopy

To ensure content portability and optimization across various platforms, every content type should have the following fieldset enabled:

● Microcopy Title

● Microcopy Description

● Microcopy Thumbnail

These fields will populate metadata for content shared on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, with properly formatted

titles, descriptions, images. See Metadata section below.


Metadata

The following metadata should be associated with each piece of content:

Metadata Description Notes

Title Title optimized for SEO Variable per node

Description Description optimized for SEO Variable per node

Keywords Targeted keywords relevant to thecontent published

Variable per node

Canonical URL Informs search engines that the nodeURL is related to the default CMS URL(i.e. node/1)

Varies per node

og:description Facebook Open Graph description Variable per node

og:image Image that appears when content isshared on Facebook

This should default to any thumbnailattached to the node, or use the 4Sitelogo as a fallback

fb:app_id ID that ties our website to our Facebookpage

This will be the same across every page

Twitter Card metadata Formats attachments to Tweets forproper display on Twitter using Twitter

Variable per node


cards

Rel tag Links our Google+ page to all indexedpages on the website

Will be persistent on every page. Shouldlink to our Google+ page.

Google Site Verification Verifies ownership of your website andindexing by Google

Will be persistent on every page

MS Validate Verifies ownership of your website andindexing by Bing

Will be persistent on every page


4site studios new website content plan

Technology

site studios website

website markup

existing website

site studios rebrandprepared

site studios staffprepared

new brand seed thenew

brand awareness

findingkey content