Purpose and scope

The Web Hub: Enhancing Bates’ Official Web Sites

Scope statement – 10/14/09, approved 11/14/09  (Jay Collier)

Purpose

The official Web sites of Bates’ academic departments and administrative offices are important to both visitors and current members of the College community as they contain a range of targeted content — persuasive, informational, procedural — about Bates people, places, ideas, and events. Taken together, these official sites provide a prime opportunity to connect our constituents with each other and with their deeper interests.

• See Domain architecture (redux)

To improve these sites, we will select, and lead deployment of, Bates’ next-generation content platform, train and coach users to migrate existing content into it, and then help continuously improve official sites over time, based on our established principles of effective Web experiences.

Since Bates already has over 100 official Web sites visible to the public, the new content platform should be usable right away — each unit should be able, with coaching assistance, to transfer its own site — and also be flexible for custom site renovations in the future.

Objectives

• Simplify the creation, classification, and publication of content by and about Bates official units
• Enable deeper engagement and interaction between Bates people based on their own interests by facilitating the exploration and discovery of content, and subscription to updates, via multiple devices
• Help site editors learn what constituents find relevant and engaging, in order to provide greater opportunities for connecting with Bates through meaningful actions

Constraints

• Limited staff and budget
• Preexisting processes for sites managed in current authoring tools
• Many similar initiatives are parked awaiting senior sponsorship and resources

Risks

• Expectation of rapid delivery
• Potential shift of priorities with new Vice President for Communications and Enrollment
• High level of success, leading to a rapidly growing pipeline of requests for new sites

Team

• Executive sponsor: Kelly Kerner
• Executive producer: Jay Collier
• Project advisors
• Content partners