Copyright © Customer Carewords Ltd. February 7, 2013 Web Management Professionals 2012 Principles & Challenges Survey Gerry McGovern

@gerrymcgovern

Background Period of Poll: October 30, 2012 to December 06, 2012 Number of valid responses: 1009 Subcategories with less than 25 voters are in red and will not have a column in the detailed analysis slides

Customer Category Segmentation

What best describes the nature of your work?

What is your primary role

What type of organisation do you work for?

How many people work in your organisation?

What do you mostly work on?

Where are you located?

QUESTIONS

Tasks (46) What do you think are the top five principles for successfully managing an organization's online presence?

Vote Trend Analysis

What do you think are the top five principles for successfully managing an organization's online presence?

What do you think are the top five principles for successfully managing an organization's online presence? (95% Confidence)

What do you think are the top five principles for successfully managing an organization's online presence? Tasks Overall Analysis

What do you think are the top five principles for successfully managing an organization's online presence?

DETAILED ANALYSIS

What is your primary role

User experience, design

What best describes the nature of your work?

What type of organisation do you work for?

How many people work in your organisation?

Where are you located?

What do you mostly work on?

Whats on the web professionals mind?

Senior Management Convincing management to listen to the facts and figures and not what they want to hear. Senior management haven't got a clue to make the necessary changes to deal with radically changed behavior from the customers. Old school, analog people trying to handle new problems with old tools. And they keep the web savvy out the decision making loop. Myopic, siloed view of web presences across the organization, resulting in fractured customer experience. Funding by 'hippo' (highest paid opinion in room).

Governance Too many content contributors; not enough authority to stop them from posting bad content. Lack of governance diffuses our efforts, forces us to fight the same battles over and over. Many cooks in the kitchen. No clear lines of responsibility for a big collection of websites. Governance - too many chiefs with no accountability making content decisions, often in conflict with other stakeholders. She with the biggest pay packet or ego usually wins the day.

Change management Adapt and align organisations for better online presence / services while we are working in systems that derive from the industrial age (former century). Getting internal stakeholders to understand that print content cannot simply be published online to be useful and task oriented; it must be re-written, edited, condensed and links must be clear and concise. Getting colleagues to understand that you need to be flexible when it comes to web projects. We need to take an iterative approach and constantly test and improve our website.

Juggling hundreds of demands despite many constraints, including time and size of team. Having adequate and properly skilled resources. Having the resources to revise the site for the user. Keeping content current on a site with approximately 3,000 documents, with only two staff assigned to maintain it (among other duties). Lack of in-house resources - access to content experts, IT resources. Staff

Funding Lack of funding-departmental strong arming when they have no clue on our agency focus. They view themselves as a priority and gets and wants all the new toys. While we wither away. Lack of resources to furnish the web site with up to date software and content; bureaucratic delays in adapting to mobile technology. Making those who control budgets aware of the importance of funding improvements to the intranet. They are yet to realise the benefits that can be obtained from having an intranet that is used.

Quality Keeping the website professional. Making it customer centered and not organisation centered. There is a lot of pushing content by colleagues. They want to 'inform / educate the public regardless of the question if it is the topic our public is interested in. Making sure the public facing content is for the public. We have internal departments that insist they need a public facing website when all they offer are services to our other departments. Simplicity, customer centric content and functionalities.

Out of date Duplicate pages, difficult navigation, system for ensuring content is up to date. Keeping website information up to date and easily accessible to consumers, while maintaining uniformity of branding / consistent look throughout our many diverse pages. Making sure all of the content on the website is up to date, has clear ownership and is presented in a logical structure. Old content that no one wants to take responsibility for and the original content provider has moved on or retired.

Volume Not overloading the website with more and more information. Reduce the amount of sprawling content, trying to make it simpler and more concise. Too many people are busy putting up content without reflection, instead of asking themselves "why". Too much content (that cannot be discarded), making it difficult to us to organize and for customers to find. We have made good progress in this regard, but still a long way to go.

Customer focus Lack of business commitment to what we do and how important UX is to our success. Intranet that serves the customer not the departments. Keeping the focus on the public, facts and evidence. Keeping up with consumer expectations. They expect a strong, valuable experience on the device they bought today. Prioritising the Digital Needs for our customers vs what the company thinks the customer need is.

Change management Convincing management that user testing is crucial to the success of the website. Convincing the people who hold the purse strings that our website has to be about our customers, not about us. Getting people to understand user journey and web usability. To create awareness among the leadership about the benefits of a consistent and pleasant online experience for our customers and... to make that experience happen.

Complexity Things change so fast on the web. CMS - which I hate. Not flexible but now everyone wants one. Platforms that doesn't work according to requirements. Poor CMS which makes it difficult to make simple and bargains processes for customers. That one has 'locked' in a solution that is not appropriate. That it is too expensive and costly to redo everything although I think it's technology that could make the product much easier to use.

Funding IT resources to handle platform growth. Resource to keep technology up to date. Getting buy-in for adherence to policies. Existing policies, however, are fractured and haphazardly enforced. We need a content management system. We need a firm (consistent) hand on enforcement and maintenance of good web design principles, and not just be web-putter- uppers.

Customer focus To create user-friendly websites that help users to perform their important tasks online. They shall, to the greatest extent possible, be self-reliant with simpler tasks. And this is a challenge. Management not understanding / caring that website users are task-centric. Keeping the focus on the tasks of our colleagues in our field offices (in the developing world) rather than on serving as a message platform for senior management.

Change management Helping my colleagues realize that we have to focus on our customers and the tasks they are trying to accomplish, not on our processes or our internal organization. Moving the organization towards task based website where the top tasks are given priority over all others. Rigid intranet structure that I can't alter, even if customer tasks were better served by another design or flexibility within the rules.

@gerrymcgovern

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APPENDIX

Full League Table of Tasks

DETAILED ANALYSIS

Tasks: What best describes the nature of your work?

What best describes the nature of your work?

Total

I work within an organization on our…

I consult with organizations on thei…

Tasks: What is your primary role

What is your primary role

Total

User experience, design

Marketing, Sales, PR, Communications

Management

IT, developer

Content creator, editor

Tasks: What type of organisation do you work for?

What type of organisation do you work for?

Total

Non-profit

Public sector

Private sector

Tasks: How many people work in your organisation?

How many people work in your organisation?

Total

Over 1,000

500 to 999

100 to 499

1 to 99

Tasks: Where are you located?

Where are you located?

Total

United States

United Kingdom

Norway

Netherlands

Denmark

Canada

Belgium

Australia

Tasks: What do you mostly work on?

What do you mostly work on?

Total

Mobile Web

Intranet

Public website