Building Better Web Pages

Sonja Fuchs, Web Technology Specialist

Permission accepted to use some content from "Building the Web Backwards” by

Mike Vysocka, web developer at North Carolina State University

Baked In

• Accessibility

• Security

• Branding

• Usability

• Mobile Friendly

• Creative Commons

• Contact Information

• Search Box

• Share Buttons

• Uptime

Photo by Dan Parsons on Flickr

Is This Your Website?

What does this mean?

Dig In

Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hyacinthe_Rigaud

Who is Your Audience?

What Does Your Audience Call It?

Titles: Short and Sweet

Relevant

Always include a summary

Picture, please

Don’t have a photo? Try: http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/agcomm/photos-illustrations

Keep Mobile in Mind

Date Range Mobile Visits to Ag CMS sites

Notes % of all Ag CMS visits

Aug. 2012 – Aug. 2013 53,256 4%

Aug. 2013 – Aug. 2014 103,545 94% increase

11%

Mobile FirstPC Mobile

- For more tips, visit my presentation Mobile Optimization Presentation Spring 2014

- If you don’t have a smartphone, sign up for Mobilizer to preview your website

The Web is Not a Newspaper

Easier to digest

PDF = pretty darn futile

• Must have Adobe Program to open

• Data usage on smartphones to download files

• Less searchable than a web page

• Hard to Share

• Can’t measure behavior

PDFs do not belong on the web, unless you’re CERTAIN people print it

“Content Audit”

Photo by Roosh Inf3ktion on Flickr

Check every page on your site:

• Delete old or irrelevant content

• Add relevant content, as often as possible

• Make sure all links are working

• Call to action or “for more info” on every page

• Link to social media

• Test on mobile

Links

If it’s already online, link to it. No need to re-create.

Link to social media

Counties should have pages for these:

• 4-H Youth Dev

• FCS

• Ag & Natural Resources

• Community Vitality

If relevant, link to other NDSU ag sites like:

• Publications

• Crop and Pest Report

• Variety Trials

• NDAWN

• Crops

• Livestock

• FCS

• Community Vitality

• Apps

• Lawns, Gardens & Trees

• Extension social media

• Extension News

• Nourishing Boomers and Beyond

Fix link text:

• Burleigh County Extension, not

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/burleighcountyextension/4-h

• Sonja Fuchs not Sonja.Fuchs@ndsu.edu

Ask local organizations to link to your site

Link to Impact Reports

Suggestions

Tell them who you are and what you do

• Bottineau does a nice job with Meet the Staff

• Burleigh county does a nice “Who we are” page

• Are you a courthouse?

• Impact Reports

• Don’t put everything on the homepage. All your pages are potentially your homepage

Ugly web:

Ask an Expert Widgets

(eXtension)

Feeds

Image by RRZEicons (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Share info from other sites on yours

using the Feed Mixer Portlet

Events

• Create the event

• The event portlet will display events and allow you to put the event on your calendar

Events portlet

Outlook calendar

Google Maps

Create your own Google Map

Great way to show events or locations

around the state

Organization

• Editorial calendar

– Online Content Calendar example

• Build and schedule ahead of time

Questions? Need Help?

Web Technology Specialists

Sonja Fuchs (701) 231-6403

Bob Bertsch (701) 231-7381

Ag CMS training & tutorials

Web Services on Facebook

Ag CMS How-To’s on YouTube