The Road to a New Web Site. pt 1

The new site for the TMJ Association launched in early 2010. As a member of the team that worked on the site, Terrie and Deanne asked me to let you know a little bit of the behind-the-scenes thinking that went in to it's creation.

When we were first brought in to redevelop the TMJ Association website we felt pretty confident: We had just finished a similar project for another not-for-profit organization that used the same underlying software and practices. Each organization had similar challenges and goals, despite having different audiences.

After meeting Terrie and Deanne we realized that they are the heart and soul of the TMJ Association. No one knows more about the daily trials of TMJ Disorder sufferers, or what it takes to keep a not-for-profit organization running with a full-time staff of two. That's right, these two extraordinary women are it, the entire full time operation! I wish I had their energy and dedication.

WHY A NEW SITE?
The TMJ Association had been noticing for some time that new membership was not keeping pace with previous years. The amount of traffic on their site was falling off and they were not sure what to do about it. Just adding more content to their current site was not working and with only two people full time it was difficult to understand how they could really do more.

We decided together that the overriding goals for the new site were:

1. To present the most valuable information so it's easy to find
   
2. Tie the site together with a better structure to make prominent information stand out.
3. Provide hooks to social media to broaden the exposure to a wider audience.
   

We knew we needed to focus on four main areas: content, social media, design and tracking our results. Seemed simple enough, but as always, there are unforeseen challenges.

WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GOES
The first challenge: look at current site content and winnow it down to the essential elements. The previous site, www.tmj.org, was stuffed full of information, some of it timely and some that was archival material. Adding to the problem was most of the content was sort of floating around on the site at the same level. There was nothing really calling attention to the more relevant information (diagnosis, treatment, things to say to your dentist).

We knew that this was the information that most new audience members wanted before delving deeper. Terrie and Deanne both know how important it is for TMJ disorder sufferers to get good information quickly. We decided that converting every scrap of information from the old site was not practical, we needed to make decisions about what to keep and what to leave on the previous site.

Initially, we considered shutting down the old site but this presented two major problems:

1. We already had Google recognition on www.tmj.org and many users that were happy with its layout and presentation.
   
2. A lot of the information at www.tmj.org was not useful on the new site, but not ready to be scrapped.
   

No matter how good a new thing is there will always be those that preferred what came before, what they were comfortable with. So, just shutting the previous site down was not really an option. Also, the goal of the new site was to present information in new ways and broaden the audience. So, what did we do?

Well, we left www.tmj.org alone...for the most part. Once we had a design (more on this later), we made the previous site look a bit updated with new graphics and logos and we renamed it as the TMJ Archive, but left it running at www.tmj.org.

Over time we hope that users will see the previous site as the "library" of the TMJ Association, a place to go when you need older documents, etc. Hopefully, the new site will be akin to a "coffee shop" where our audience can get up-to-date, portable information and social media links. Even after we decided what content needed to be moved we needed to look at that content carefully.

MAKE IT STAND OUT
To be certain we were serving our potential new audience we reviewed and edited the content for online presentation. We created more prominent headlines to make content easier to identify. We offered multiple ways to find information, such as a search box, a couple of different menus, blogs, etc. We simplified the content into three main areas:

1. Living with TMJD's - Essential real world information about dealing with disorders
2. The TMJ Community - Links and resources that unify our audience and provide them with updates.
3. The Science of TMJ - Keeping our audience informed about research and good practices.

Most online readers scan rather than read. They do not take the time to read every article (no matter how valuable it might seem to the writer). They zip through the first few words and move on unless they're really interested. So what did we do?

Nothing radical here, just streamlined to be presented for scanning rather than in-depth reading. Shortened some articles, made lists of others, etc. always with an eye to keeping the information succinct, on target and easily accessible.

NEXT TIME : Design Decisions.