Transcript PowerPoint 97/2000 format

The Web For The PR and
Marketing Community
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY
UKOLN is supported by:
Email
[email protected]
Slides available from
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
web-focus/events/
About Me
Brian Kelly:
• UK Web Focus – a JISC-funded post to advise HE
and FE communities on Web developments
• Based in UKOLN – a national focus of expertise in
digital information management
• Based at the University of Bath
• Involved in Web since 1993, while working in
Computing Service at University of Leeds
• Strong links with Computing Service and Library
communities
• Unfamiliar with the PR and Marketing communities
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D
About You
Group Discussion
What is your involvement with the Web?
What topics would you like covered today?
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Possible Interests
Personalisation
Is Flash acceptable?
Design
File formats
News
Content Management Systems
Advertising
Legal issues
Interests
Uses of the Web
Resourcing
Technologies
Performance Indicators
Business models
B2C
B2B
Managing Web Teams
Web Strategies
Outsourcing
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Is The Web Important?
Ad in Guardian, 17 Mar 2001
WWW Coordinator
“Our WWW site is the fastest growing strand of our
marketing activity. To reflect its strategic importance,
we now need an experienced WWW coordinator ... to
take charge of the site.
As a member of our nine-strong marketing team, you
will be expected to champion the WWW at the
University. You will need to possess the personality
and diplomacy to influence colleagues at every level,
enthusiasm and patience to run training in WWW
authoring tool, and excellent organisational and timemanagement skills.”
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Contents
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The Institutional Home Page
Monitoring and Auditing Web Sites
Driving Traffic to Web Sites
Performance Indicators
Advertising
Some Technological Issues
Follow Up Actions
University Entry Point
The University Entry Point:
• Main initial view of an institution on the Web
(and possibly ever)
Visual Identity
• Provides a brief (but important) statement
about your institution
Navigation
• Provides main access point to resources
Functionality
• May provide additional functionality: news
items, personalisation, “sticky” features, …
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University Entry Point
A “rolling demonstration” of University entry points is
available at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/
site-rolling-demos/universities/>
Types of entry points:
• Traditional menu structure
• Changeable page, with news
• Personalised page
• Dynamic page
• “Splash screens”
• Spawning new windows
• Pages requiring specialist browser functionality
(e.g. plugins, Java support, etc.)
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Traditional type of interface
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Spawning New Windows
Univ of Derby creates a new
window and uses animation
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“Personalised” Interface
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“Splash Screens”
See also:
• Westminster
• Plymouth?
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New Technologies
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/
Animated
menus
Scrolling
Java applet
Browser
dependency
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D
Issues
Group Discussion
What type on entry point do you currently have?
What type would you prefer?
How do you achieve your preferred design?
Things to think about:
• Does it work (aesthetic and usability issues)?
• Does it function universally?
• Is the performance acceptable for home use?
• Is it reusable?
• Is it reconfigurable?
• Is it indexable?
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Universal Access
Does your home page (and Web site) work in:
• Netscape (very popular in UK HE)
• IE (most widely used browser)
• Significant (all?) versions and platforms of above
• Lynx (text browser which may be used by visually
impaired)
• The new speaking browser which may be bundled
with your VC’s top-of-the-range BMW
Remember that disability legislation may make it
illegal to disenfranchise users with disabilities
through use of inaccessible Web technologies
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Auditing & Monitoring
It can be useful to audit and monitor your home page
and your Web site in order to:
• Check key pages for accessibility, validation and
appearance and functionality in various browsers
• Comparison with your peers
• Monitor effectiveness of dissemination strategy
For a series of exercises on monitoring and evaluation of Web
site see <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/
workshops/pub-lib-2000/workshop/>
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Monitoring the HEERA Site
Let’s use some Web-based monitoring tools to look at
the HEERA Web site
We’ll investigate:
• Nos. of links to HEERA
• No. of HEERA pages indexed
• Accessibility of HEERA site
You can apply this methodology on your own Web site,
and make comparisons with your peers
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HEERA Web Site
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http://www.heera.ac.uk/
Links to HEERA
LinkPopularity
reports only 2-3 links
to HEERA (from
Heist, AUT & CVCP)
Links to a Web site:
• Drive traffic to site
• Indication of
perceived
importance
• Used by citationranking search
engines (Google)
http://www.linkpopularity.com/
A survey of links to UK HEI Web sites is available at
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/web-watch/>
There were 42,000+ links to the main Sheffield server and
19231,000+ links to all Cambridge servers in March 2000
HEERA Pages Indexed
Linkpopularity makes
use of data in AltaVista,
etc.
You can interrogate these
search engines directly to
measure:
• Nos. of pages indexed
• Nos. of links to site
http://www.altavista.com/
There are 6,322 pages from the main Cambridge Web site in AltaVista’s
index. How many of HEERA’s pages do you think are indexed? 1!
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As Others See You
HEERA as
seen with
images
switched off
A speaking
browser (for
the blind or
the BMW
browser) will
say the
highlighted
words and
follow the
highlighted
links
NOTE Problems also with Opera browsers
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As Others See You (2)
If the visually
impaired user gets
past the first screen,
they are presented
with an empty
framed page
Question: Is this Web site illegal under recent disability legislation?
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Visibility To Robots
Robot software:
• Is used by search engines to index Web sites
• Only index text pages – if no text is found, the page
will be invisible
• Typically aren’t aware of framed pages, and won’t
index sites hidden behind frames (unless links to a
non-frames version are provided)
• This is why AltaVista has indexed only the first page
in HEERA, and has only found the page title
“Welcome to HEERA” to index
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As Others See You (3)
DejaVu allows you to view
Web pages using an emulation
of old browsers
It can be useful for
seeing your Web site:
• In an old browser
• In a browsers which
do not support
features you’re using
(e.g. frames,
JavaScript, etc.)
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http://www.dejavu.org/
As Others See You (4)
Lynx allows you to see how your Web site will look
to a visually impaired user or a robot
The HEERA Web site not only has a large single image
on the home page and no ALT text, it also checks for the
browser type and fails if it’s not Netscape or IE!
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Is It Reconfigurable?
It is desirable to allow the end user to reconfigure a Web site:
• Change font sizes,
settings, etc.
• Change background
colours
• Change window
shape (e.g. minimise
scrolling)
Is It Citable?
How do you refer to the
page about the HEERA
Training Day – the Web
site uses frames, so no URL is obvious 
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Does It Work?
After you go to the
newsletter section
…
Clicking on an
article gives a 404
error message 
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Notice that the 404
error message
is poor:
• It is not possible
to see the URL (due to use of frames)
• No links to a search page
• What’s the address of the server administrator?
Web Site On Your Phone
Well-formed Web sites can be automatically converted
to WML for viewing on a WAP phone
See <http://www.gelon.net/>
Although you probably wouldn’t want to read an entire Web site, you
may wish to look at news, contact details, addresses, etc.
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Web Site Clinics
Various Webbased services for
checking Web
pages and Web
sites are available:
• Dr HTML
• WebSiteGarage
• NetMechanic
•…
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Accessibility Checkers
Bobby is a popular
accessibility checker which
provides both single-page
and site analyses
The site analysis requires
the Bobby Java application
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http://www.cast.org/bobby/
The Bobby site analyser would not
run on the HEERA site (due to useragent checking?)
Comparisons
A number of the Web-based auditing and monitoring
services have been used across UK HE Web sites:
Survey Of Links to UK University Web Sites, Mar 2000
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/web-watch/>
Survey Of Numbers of UK University Web Servers, Jun 2000
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk /issue24/web-watch/>
Survey Of Web Server Software, Sept 2000
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/web-watch/>
As well as rolling demos of services:
UK University Entry Points
UK University Search Engines
UK University 404 Pages
See <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/
site-rolling-demos/>
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What other surveys would be useful? How about the size
of University entry points, with a prize for the smallest?
Driving Traffic To Web Site
You want to attract visitors to your Web site
Suggestions:
• Have a search-engine friendly Web site (avoid
frames, plugins, short URLs, etc.)
• Use the Robot Exclusion Protocol (REP) to stop
“junk” from being indexed
• Provide a Site Map and use this with submission
services
• Real world promotion
• …
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Search Engine Issues
Issues:
• Many search engines will not follow frames or index
content in unusual formats
 Avoid frames and use HTML resources
• Search engines may index only the “top” of Web sites
 Don’t have too many directories in your Web site
http://www.foo.ac.uk/depts/maths/ug/year1/projects/polyn/
 Think about use of multiple domains
http://maths.foo.ac.uk/
http://intranet.foo.ac.uk/
…
 Avoid splash screens
• Many search engines index only static-looking URLs
 Avoid dynamic URLs (remap them)
Lots of other issues
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http://www.foo.ac.uk/news.cgi?id=1034
Avoiding Junk Being Indexed
A search for your institution, project, news story, etc:
• Returns a draft version of the story
• Gives a message in a mail archive
• Gives a student home page
Some suggestions:
• Use the robot exclusion protocol (REP) to prevent low-quality
areas from being indexed
• Use <META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=“noindex..”>
in low quality document (author can do this)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /news/draft
robots.txt
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Issues
• Check your robots.txt file by viewing
http://www.foo/.ac.uk/robots.txt
• Requires SysAdmin privileges
• Issues about control, access, …
• Don’t do without much thought
Site Maps
http://www.cultivate-int.org/browse/
Site Maps
• Provide users with an
overview of your Web
site and speedy
access to resources
• Can be used to submit
key resources to
search engines
Issues to think about:
• Automating the
production of a site
map
• Integration with a
This page gives readers instant access to
“What’s New” page
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all articles. The page is also submitted to
search engines so they index all articles.
Outsourcing
Should you outsource your design?
Issues:
• A good design brief is essential
• Should you separate the design from the
information architecture?
• The UK HE / FE Web Management community has
experiences (good and bad) with external designers
– can we learn from our experiences?
• Should we provide open access to design briefs?
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Example
Tried to find map of a college. The Web site was developed in
Flash, and the Back button did not work.
Also see <http://www.barkad.co.uk/> - discussed on
admin-heera JISCmail list recently
Decreasing Importance Of Web Sites?
Will we see a the traditional Web site decrease in importance
as “fusion” or “aggregation” sites develop?
Fusion sites:
• Can include
applications
(calendar, email,
etc.) as well as
information
• May reflect users’
personal interests
• May develop from
JISC’s DNER
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Externally Hosted Web Services
You can also outsource
elements of your Web
service through use of
externally-hosted Web
services:
• Web statistics
• Feedback
• Monitoring (as seen)
• …
For a discussion of pros and cons see “Using Externally-Hosted Web
Services” at <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/web-focus/>
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Performance Indicators
Web statistics:
• “Lies, dammed lies and Web statistics”
• See Performance Indicators For Web Sites at
<http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/indicators/>
Issues:
• Hits cover all elements on page (inc. invisible GIFs)
so changes in authoring tools will alter graphs of hits
• Page hits and nos. of visitors is better but:
– Caching will under-record nos. of pages accessed
– Many visitors view one page and then leave, so your
growth may simply reflect growth in nos. on Internet users
– Growth may reflect increase in nos. of robots
– Unique visitors are difficult to detect because of
(a) shared PCs; (b) dynamic IP addressing & (c) firewalls
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• Performance indicators needed, but use with care
Advertising
Should you carry adverts on your Web site:
 Useful income stream
 Users familiar with ads on commercial Web sites
 Targetted ads may enrich users experience
 If you don’t do it, others will
 It’s not an ad, it’s a sponsorship deal / an affiliate
program / …
But what about:
 The JANET AUP?
 Universities neutral and trusted stance?
 Performance problems?
 User backlash?
 Who gets the money?
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Advertising
A JISC-funded study on
“Advertising On JANET” has
recently been carried out which
addressed:
• What we mean by advertising
• Performance implications
• Ethical issues
•…
See <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
web-focus/events/conferences/
ili-2001/advertising/> for slides on
talk on Advertising on Your Web Site
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News Feeds
We want to disseminate our
news widely
We can put information on
our Web sites
News feeds allow us
to provide information
in a format suitable for
automatic inclusion in
third party Web sites
RSS (Rich Site
Summary) allows us
to do this
See
<http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/>
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Content Use, Reuse & Misuse
What do you do if:
• Someone emails you and asks if it’s OK to link to
your Web site? No problem
• Someone links to your Web site and puts it in a
frame Possible problem
• Someone uses a logo from your Web site
Copyright breach – but what if it’s a graduate praising Univ?
• A third party portal contains incorrect information
about your Web site Errors aren’t illegal – email them*
• HERO contains errors Part of community – email them
• A competing University includes your University
name in its metadata to drive searches to its site
“The UK map is wrong, the list of Universities in Manchester is rubbish. They
can't even get UMIST's name right and the link doesn't work anyway”
Message about <http://www.university-link.com/>
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A Need For Agreements?
There are:
• Technological solutions (ban framing of your site;
provision of logos for use by 3rd parties - “I studied
at Bath Univ”, watermarks in logos, …)
• Legal solutions
• Pragmatic solutions
But:
• Uncertainty and different perspectives
• Need for agreements?
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The Technology Bit
Large institutions should be considering:
• Use of backend databases to store structure
information
• Use of a Content Management System (CMS) to
manage large nos. of resources, support workflow,
allow resources to be reused, etc.
• A move from HTML to XHTML (an XML application
which will make it easer to reuse resources)
• Use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the
appearance of (X)HTML resources
• Doing the clever stuff at the server, so that clients
won’t break when they receive content they can’t
process
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Where To From Here?
Discussion Fora
• The website-info-mgt JISCmail list is used for Web
managers to discuss strategic, managerial and
policy issues
• The web-support JISCmail list is used for Web
managers and others to discuss techie and detailed
topics
Do we need to establish extra communications between
Web Management, PR and marketing (and other)
communities?
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Questions
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