Designing your SharePoint Internet site: The basics

Designing your SharePoint Internet site: The basics

Quick Facts

About Us• 22nd Year• Grand Rapids &

Royal Oak• 30 Staff

Approach• Vendor

Independent• Non-reseller• Professional

Services Only

Partnerships• Microsoft Gold• VMware Enterprise• Citrix Silver• Cisco Registered• Novell Gold

Expertise

Microsoft Gold Partner

Competencies• Four Gold• Eight Silver

Successes• Customer Excellence

Award• Virtual Technical

Specialist (VTSP)• Managed Partner• Numerous Partner

Awards

Pinpoint• Microsoft’s official

partner directory• 5-star rating

Get Social with C/D/H

C/D/H Talks Tech C/D/H Tweets Tech

Your Presenter

Jeff KinnellyConsultant, Design / DevelopmentJeffK@cdh.com

Agenda

• Understanding user experience• User experience in SharePoint • Case study: Chippewa Valley Technical College• Development tools and tips• Web analytics and optimization• Demo: Master pages & page layouts• Demo: Methods for branding SharePoint sites• Resources

The Goal

8

Make It Not Look Like SharePoint!

Fiat.com

Sharpie.com

Brembo.com

AMD.com

UX. What is it?

User Experiencen. the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system

UX. What is it?

User Experience is multifaceted!

UX. What is it?

User Experience is…a multi-disciplinary process of design

• Accessibility • Information Architecture (IAI)• Information Design (IDA)• Interaction Design (IxDA)• Technical Writing (STC)• Usability Engineering (UPA)• User Research (HFES)• Visual Design / Branding • Web Analytics (WAA)

UX. What is it?

• Differentiates a product or service• Creates business opportunities• Improves efficiency

The Proof is in the Returns

012345678

9

10

Year 1Year 3

Year 5

Design Organizations

S&P 500

Stock performance of 63 “Design Oriented Companies” versus the S&P 500 over 1, 3 and 5 years Source: Peer Research , Fast Company,

A Valuable Investment

• “Every $1 invested in usability returns between $10 and $100” -- IBM, Cost-Justifying Ease of Use

• Investing 10% of a total project budget yields:Metric ReturnSales/ Conversion rate  100%Visitors/ Traffic 150%User Performance / Productivity 161%Use of (Key) Features 202%

Jakob Nielson, Return on Investment for Usability

UX with SharePoint

What Users Want

1. Users don’t care about how the software is built. They want performance, convenience and results

2. Unless it allows them to get their work/task done faster, they don’t want to learn a new/different way of doing something

3. They want a responsive UI with visual clues as to ‘what next’. They don’t want to guess what to do (or hunt for it)

4. As far as they’re concerned the experience is the product

What Users Expect: Conventions

Marcy Kellar / Universal Usability Guidelines

Successfully Improving User Experience

• Use Web Analytics to identify when usability issues occur (e.g. funnel analysis)

• Find reasons why usability issues occur (e.g. expert review)• Evaluate different design solutions (e.g. usability testing)• Validate design solutions (e.g. multivariate testing)• Use Web Analytics data to optimize navigation (e.g. order

of navigation items)• Interdisciplinary teams of Information Architects, User

Researchers, Designers, and Web Analysts can fulfill these requirements best

Source: Nicolas Mohr - SapientNitro

Content is King

Facets of content relevant to SharePoint– Governance & Ownership - Who owns, creates content?

When does content get created or removed? Is it centralized? Does it need approval?

Format (that content is in)– Textual documents, articles,, newsletters, audio &

videos, etc.– Volume– How big is your website going to be? How many content

contributors do you have?Dynamism

– What is the rate of growth of content? Should it expire?

How Pages Work

Design Best Practices

• Master Pages– 2 or 3

• Home page• Landing page• Content Subpage

• Content Types– 1 – very generic and broad type

• Page Layouts– Optimal number 5 to 7

• Less than 5 Limited layout options• More than 7 Difficult to support and train end-users

– Consider maintenance

Design Best Practices

• Build your own templates– Site definitions– Master pages– Style sheets– Content types– Page layouts

• Leverage SharePoint Community resources• Randy Drisgill - MVP SharePoint Server

– Starter Master Pages for SharePoint 2010

Case Study:Chippewa Valley Technical College

• Public website • Rich-media enhancements• Leverages OOTB functionality• Leveraged staff’s knowledge• Rich integration with data systems• Measureable objectives

– Process Automation– Centralized course catalog

http://www.cvtc.edu/http://www.cvtc.edu/

Analytics & Optimization

Performance Goals: Reduce page weight (wait)

SP2010 Techniques• Output Caching• CSS Sprites • Consolidate JS & CSS files • Cache JS, CSS and image

files in browser • Minification of JS and CSS• Anonymous access for

CSS, JS and image files• Javascript Suppression

Dev/Optimization• Yslow• Fiddler• Firebug• Hammerhead• Aptimize

Analytics• Reinvigorate• Omniture• Google Analytics• Web Trends

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Remove specific content from Search Results<div class=“footer noindex”/>

<!--- footer content ---></div>

Security controlled content

<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" Permissions="ManageWeb">

<!--- content here ---></Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Including a footer in your design?

Add s4-notdlg for HTML elements that you don’t want to show in the dialog boxes

<div class=“customFooter”>

<div class=“customFooter s4-notdlg”>

Easily show a Favicon in SharePoint 2010

Easily show a Favicon in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2007 approach<link rel=“shortcut icon” href=“/Style Library/images/favicon.ico”/>

SharePoint 2010 approach<SharePoint:SPShortcutIcon runat=“server” IconUrl=“/Style Library/images/favicon.ico”/>

Improve Performance

Javascript Optimization

The problem…– SP2010 Javascript payload is large (480k)– Script On Demand framework (SOD)– Removal / suppression isn’t currently

supportedThe solution…

– A custom control– Improves page load times by 16%-25%

Chris O'Brien - SharePoint MVP (www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com)

Javascript Optimization

Chris O'Brien - SharePoint MVP (www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com)

• Automates many optimizations– Image sprites– Combining/minifying JavaScript & CSS

• Filter is installed on WFEs• Good option where no optimization

expertise?• Project decision – spend $ on product or

implementation effort?

Aptimize

Aptimize

In Conclusion

• Design should be about making business sense and achieving business objectives

• Users aren’t concerned about the technical solution

• Users want performance, convenience and results

• Every Web CMS has its quirks• SharePoint remains an evolving and

flexible solution

Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point. Design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.

Douglas MartinBook Design: A Practical Introduction

Royal Oak306 S Washington AveSuite 212Royal Oak, MI 48067p: (248) 546-1800

Thank You

Grand Rapids15 Ionia SWSuite 270Grand Rapids, MI 49503p: (616) 776-1600

(c) C/D/H 2007. All rights reservedwww.cdh.com