Don’t Overlook Your Website’s Admin User Experience
We all know that user experience is paramount when we are talking about websites, but what about when we are talking about the backend of those websites? If you are thinking… “who cares?”…then:
A.) you have probably never been in charge of updating content on a website
B.) you have never lost the person that used to be the person who updated content on your website…or
C.) you are in the lovely position of never worrying about any of this because you have access to countless content developers and programmers who are ready to tackle this for you at a moment’s notice.
Is Investing in your Website’s Back-end Experience Worth the Money?
Most of my clients, including even me fall into none of these categories. In fact, for most, the ease of updating a website in today’s “content is a commodity”-driven culture is paramount. And having the foresight to design for the future anticipating an admin’s frustration is not only an art, but it’s a science (and can cost oodles of cash). But is it worth it? Is investing in your website’s backend experience almost as important as investing in the forward-facing website? Well, yes. The answer is yes, but the answer is not that simple.
An Investment in Your Website’s Backend User Experience is and Investment in the Future of Your Brand
An investment in the backend user experience is actually and investment in the forward-facing website. But exactly what sorts of things are most important and shouldn’t be overlooked when planning and designing a new website for your organization?
Don’t think of Design Restrictions of Limitations. Think of Them as Automating Part of Your Job
Sure creativity is part of the deal when you work in marketing, but adding frills to the website shouldn’t be a priority. Planning out and defining styles is an important conversation to have with your experience designer. It will make your life easier in the long run and make the website look most on-brand.
Be Realistic About Your Website Updates.
Design the site for what you are realistically going to be able to update over the next year. For example: don’t design a website with “heroes” that involve video, when you don’t have any videos!
Plan for Your Future
There is a delicate balance between planning for the future and being honest with yourself about resource allocation. I’ve seen this happen time and time again. For example: are you going to be able to remain rigid about your offerings? You should. And if not, should you ask yourself why this new service offering doesn’t fit into the architecture of the website? Yes.
SEO and Other Such Things
When you deploy your website, ask yourself if SEO is important for your business. Nine times out of ten that answer is yes. Consider SEO plugins and or editors that may help your admin push your ahead in search.
Navigation, the Backbone of Your Site
How agile is your org? How much building and adding do you see going on with your site? Have these discussions with your website architect.
Some Things (Like Content) Never Change
Well, as they say never say never…I guess. But there are certain elements that your website should keep intact, what are those? Again, a good conversation to have!
What Goes Here, Again?
We have all seen it. The backend of a website that has been Frankstein-ed together. To a person that enjoys (actually loves) organizing information having to guess what section to click on in the backend or the front end of a website is like opening a drawer labeled socks and finding underwear. The horror! Don’t be that person.
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