{"id":1632,"date":"2012-12-10T12:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T17:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-23T12:52:37","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:52:37","slug":"is-it-wrong-to-herald-the-death-of-the-institutional-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/is-it-wrong-to-herald-the-death-of-the-institutional-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it wrong to herald the death of the institutional website?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently facilitated a workshop for junior researchers on research uptake and communications. I stood before them espousing the kinds of views on e-communications often found on this blog. I explained that people were using the internet in a different way. It was no longer about strategies to get people back to our websites again and again. The proliferation of social media tools and ways to receive feeds of information mean that people now read what they want and how they want it. The institutional website is decreasing in its importance. At this point a hand shot up at the back. \u2018Er well haven\u2019t IDS just relaunched their website?\u2019 they asked. Just in case there was any doubt to the answer the\u00a0home page<\/a>\u00a0of the sparklingly new site helpfully shone back at me from where it was being projected onto the wall behind. They needed an explanation.<\/p>\n

Is there a contradiction in our online strategy?<\/h2>\n

No, I do not believe there is. On one hand we do invest a great deal of time and effort into the\u00a0IDS website<\/a>. On the other we recognise that our broader utilisation of social media and online communities and networks is key to supporting our researchers\u2019 uptake strategies. We support the concept of a\u00a0cradle to the grey<\/a>\u00a0approach to digital communication that builds online activity into projects from start to finish, as Nick Scott has suggested. One IDS team has pioneered the use of mobile devices to upload research data gathered on field visits to their\u00a0project blog<\/a>\u00a0so it could be shared immediately. Over the past 18 months we have launched five new\u00a0research team blogs<\/a>, we have doubled our followers on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, tripled our e-newsletter subscriptions and we have developed an\u00a0open Application Programming Interface<\/a>\u00a0(API) that enables access to over 32,000 research documents from the online information services\u00a0Eldis and BRIDGE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Amidst all these innovations I have noticed a growing antipathy towards investment in institutional sites from some quarters. I am not sure anyone is saying have nothing. But what about investing in a brand new site as IDS, ODI and\u00a0IIED<\/a>\u00a0have all done this year? I agree with Nick that you need \u2018to be there<\/a>\u2019 – but part of this is the provision of a solid, and let\u2019s face it, attractive platform or space which demonstrates your credibility (and dare I say it brand and values) and allows different users to explore your products and services. Most importantly as knowledge generators we need to provide a robust searchable store for all our outputs. Some might argue that this is what institutional repositories are for. Indeed, this winter IDS begins rolling out our own\u00a0open access digital repository<\/a>. It will substantially increase the searchability of IDS research and enable our researchers to comply with their funders\u2019 open access mandates. However, this is a platform more geared towards academic audiences and it is still our website that can most effectively connect users with our values, messages and services.<\/p>\n

5 things our website needed to do better<\/h2>\n

We carried out extensive research with our web users and key stakeholders last spring. We discovered that people use our site to search out information and understand who we are and what we have to offer them. But they found the site cluttered and confusing. Too much of the navigation and content was geared towards explaining how we were structured and was not designed to meet the needs of the users whether they be students, funders, media, research users or academics.<\/p>\n

\"Word
Word cloud shows feedback on design of previous IDS website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We published a report that set out the following recommendations:<\/p>\n