Slightly earlier than usual this year we will be resigning ourselves to the fact that England will not be crowned in football glory, ahh well, time to create that tenuous link with that other more desirable nation you claim was always your “second team” anyway. It certainly has been a fantastic tournament so far and one of the things I’m really starting to admire is how certain teams always seem to get it right year after year. Since Woy won’t be asking me for my expert advice any time soon I felt it was only right to apply the things I’ve been observing to a similarly complex environment, i.e. maintaining a successful website. It takes a long term vision, the right team members and the ability to please the crowd so make sure your website admin team aren’t the ones heading home early and use my winning tactics for ongoing digital success (if there are any clichés I’ve actually missed feel free to add them to the comments section below, I double dare you);
As we all know managing a website is a game of two halves – the technical and the strategic, so here are my thoughts on maintaining long term success:
A Strong Defence
Whether it is your internal team members or an outside agency who look after the technical aspects of the site you really want to avoid last ditch defending against the regular updates every website requires. The type of things that normally fall into this category are server updates/upgrades, content management system updates/upgrades and module/plugin updates, the latter two are crucial to ensure your site remains secure so I wouldn’t go taking a risk with your last line of defence.
The amount of time needed to implement updates can vary depending on the make up of your individual site but we’ve found that on average for WordPress sites you need to allocate about 8 hours a year and for Drupal sites usually 12 hours p.a. is the minimum needed. Although less of an issue for WordPress sites, a major CMS upgrade like the impending arrival of Drupal 8 can sometimes feel like being on the end of a two-footed tackle if you’re unprepared, due to the amount of potential work needed in ensuring a smooth transition over to the latest version. For that reason ideally it is essential to have a team member who can read the game and start the migration process early from an internal perspective, for minimal disruption to your ‘dressing room’. Not being aware of security risks associated with a poorly maintained site represents real tactical naivety.
An Attacking Philosophy
Teams who sit back and take a reactive approach rarely ever excite the fans, or in this case their online audiences. For any team it is important to appreciate how a proactive digital development path will support them in sustaining ongoing digital success. Far too few organisations take the time to engage in ‘blue sky’ thinking about their ideal online presence but this is the perfect place to start. The findings of any discussion will need to be narrowed down into something that is potentially more realistic and so I advise using the MoSCoW technique – dividing your wishlist into the following categories; ‘must haves’, ‘should haves’, ‘could haves’ and ‘would haves’. Whilst this technique is usually reserved to establish priorities for a single project it can also effectively be used to determine where items would fall into a timeline or roadmap i.e. ‘must haves’ in a shorter time frame and ‘would haves’ furthest away with the determining factor being available budget. Of course it is understandable that a digital strategy is never really route one and there will inevitably be things that alter the course but so long as the internal team and any external agencies you work with understand the overarching ‘philosophy’ you can take an attacking approach to continuously improve your digital offering and stay ahead of the competition.
The Right Backroom staff
All the teams who achieve ongoing digital success know that in order to do so it will take a joint effort from everyone connected. This goes beyond just the players on the front lines but extends into the backroom staff and those behind the scenes. For a lot of organisations this usually translates into the requirement of external technical support for day to day issues and bugs, but its important not to neglect the importance of the strategic support. In order to provide the highest level it means having one point of contact (i.e. an account manager) who is completely knowledgeable of the organisation and the site, through the familiarity they have issues can be managed more effectively. We like to think of our own accounts team as a bit like assistant managers in football – not only do they help with the day to day running of the site but they are there to help create and focus the long term direction and help deliver an achievable roadmap, they pro-actively report back on benchmarks/kpi’s and keep the website managers informed about important developments. This will hopefully give your flair players (content creators) the ability to focus on their game, keeping the site up to date and engaging. Needless to say when you find the right squad you’ll want to keep them in place for years to come.
To summarise -you’ll want to play from the back with an attacking mentality and allow your flair players the freedom to express themselves… but ultimately give the fans what they want!
Sam looks after business development here at Pedalo and tweets regularly, you can catch him via @sambha25
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