{"id":1619,"date":"2013-01-03T12:33:07","date_gmt":"2013-01-03T17:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-23T12:36:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:36:39","slug":"corporate-websites-do-we-need-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/corporate-websites-do-we-need-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate websites: do we need them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier in 2012,\u00a0Nick Scott\u00a0<\/a>wrote about\u00a0the decline of the corporate website<\/a>. And then he went ahead to redesign and relaunch ODI’s site. Later in the year,\u00a0James Georgalakis<\/a>, Head of Communications at IDS, wrote about how they had also redesigned and relaunched their website, asking\u00a0if it is wrong to herald the death of the corporate website<\/a>.+<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday,\u00a0Suzanne FisherMurray<\/a>\u00a0from IIED joined the discussion with\u00a0a comment\u00a0<\/a>on James’ post that reflects on\u00a0IIED’s own website redesign earlier in 2012<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019d agree that it\u2019s not an either or choice \u2013both an institutional website is important, but so is investing time in social media and online networks. That\u2019s why IIED redesigned its website, became active on a number of social media channels and broke down barriers between the main website and our social media channels. For example, our twitter feed now pulls through onto our homepage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

IIED wants its site to allow the visitor to participate with the work of the think tank. Central to their redesign is a “getting involved” feature.<\/p>\n

And yesterday, too, Nick Scott rejoined the debate with a post of his own on the ODI blog:<\/p>\n

As one of the people who has heralded the death of the institutional website, I wanted to take the opportunity in my post to restate where an institutional website can fit in the picture. I definitely think the direction of travel is that institutional websites will effectively be obsolete in a few years\u2019 time, but I accepted when I first wrote on this subject \u2013 and still accept \u2013 that institutional website have a role in the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s allowed me to repost some of it so let me pick the bit that is most relevant for this discussion (but make sure to read the whole post:\u00a0Corporate websites are \u2018in decline\u2019: so why the refresh of the ODI site?\u00a0<\/a>and join the\u00a0conversation<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t I practice what I preached? The answer comes in the closing sentence of the very same blog: \u2018Organisations that get this right can have their cake and eat it: develop the website \u2026 but expect that over time more communications will take place in the places the website connects to.\u2019<\/p>\n

The technology didn\u2019t support the strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted ODI to \u2018have our cake and eat it\u2019, using the website as a central communications tool while it remained important, but also preparing for the future. The fact is that the old content management system that the website was run on couldn\u2019t support either current or future use adequately. On each of the three planks of\u00a0our digital strategy<\/a>\u00a0it failed to meet our needs:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It didn\u2019t connect easily to other sites or platforms, allowing us to push content to them. We would want this for effective\u00a0\u2018<\/em>being there communications<\/a>\u2019\u00a0<\/em>that reach our audience wherever they may be.<\/li>\n
  2. It didn\u2019t allow readers to quickly access old content, or allow us to profile new and multi-media content we create around the web. We would require this to offer a comprehensive\u00a0\u2018<\/em>cradle to grey research<\/a>\u2019\u00a0<\/em>tool that makes the most of research throughout its\u2019 lifecycle.<\/li>\n
  3. It was built using bespoke technology, meaning we had to build every innovation for ourselves rather than taking advantage of content and technologies made freely available on the internet. We would have to do this to be \u2018reusing the wheel<\/a>\u2018, rather than reinventing it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So our new site is built on an open source platform,\u00a0Drupal<\/a>. This is the one of the most commonly used content management systems, and one of the most developed-for. We hope our new site will allow us to:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Do more with less effort by posting to other platforms automatically: Because there are so many developers working on Drupal, there are lots of people who have made modules to connect to other sites. So we will be able to more easily make our blogs available through\u00a0Facebook<\/a>, send links to\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, or use\u00a0EventBrite<\/a>\u00a0to manage events.<\/li>\n
    2. Be more flexible about how we bring together mixed media content and content from other sites:\u00a0Most ODI website content uses a standard template. However sometimes we need to break out of straitjackets. The old website did not allow this; Drupal does. In the coming years, ODI will be able to bring together our video, audio, imagery as well as text. This will help to tell a coherent and enticing story of the disparate strands of communications being delivered across the web.<\/li>\n
    3. Offer you, our users, a quicker and easier route to the information you require:\u00a0It was hard to access to the full breadth of ODI work on our old site. Our new\u00a0Search Centre<\/a>\u00a0is designed to allow all our content to be found quickly and easily. We hope this means that everything is found and read more, ensuring that our content continues to be found even when we aren\u2019t actively promoting it anymore.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      I think it is safe to say that all three would like to hear from you so do join in, here, in\u00a0James’\u00a0<\/a>post,\u00a0Suzanne’s<\/a>, or\u00a0Nick’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      I would like to know about new websites of think tanks in developing countries. What is behind their design (or redesign)? How did you go about doing so? How does it interact with other platforms and social media? Is it working?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

      If you have examples to share, please contact me about them and we’ll feature them over the next few months. You can prepare a post for On Think Tanks, we can repost a post you have written elsewhere (for your own blog, for instance), or we’d be happy to conduct a short interview if that’s easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Earlier in 2012,\u00a0Nick Scott\u00a0wrote about\u00a0the decline of the corporate website. And then he went ahead to redesign and relaunch ODI’s site. Later in the year,\u00a0James Georgalakis, Head of Communications at IDS, wrote about how they had also redesigned and relaunched their website, asking\u00a0if it is wrong to herald the death of the corporate website. Yesterday,\u00a0Suzanne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[220,235,477,476,275,467],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}