Giraffe Forum

If getting a fancy new technology is the only motivation, I see your point.
On the other hand, there are sometimes good reason to go to a new system:
- The current system is not supported anymore.
- The current system is not flexible enough and does not allow you to fix basic usability issues.
I also might add that migrating to a new system can motivate some to clean up old content. Migrations are pretty big and complicated processes, so the cleaner your content is, the smoother it will go.

We don’t hire web content professionals. Instead we find the most junior person in the department and give them the job of managing the website.
Too true & great analogy there with the rancid milk in the jug Gerry.

Previously, I have thought of a factory analogy for organisations that want to transact on the web.

An organisation wants to manufacture high quality widgets. They invest in the highest tech plant available on the market and employ the cleverest management team money can buy. When it actually comes time to produce the widgets (web content) the clever management team decides enough capital has already been allocated and doesn’t bother employing skilled labour to make the widgets. Instead they decide that the people in accounts will have to take on the role of manufacturing the widgets in addition to their normal duties.

A “Garbage In = Garbage Out” situation occurs instead of producing high quality widgets (the core purpose of the factory.

What an excellent, well-observed commentary on website ‘redevelopment’. I hope it hits home in the quarters that need to learn the moral of the story.

Because organizations think good content has low value, sometimes it gets thrown away during a migration. Here is an example: I manage the site of a city government. On the edge of our town is a large tract of undeveloped property. It’s been the subject of a lot of study and “what should we do with it” planning in recent years. During the height of that planning phase, we had lots of content - maps, aerial photos, public comments, etc. - on the site. When we migrated to a new design, the plan was done and the planning department told me we didn’t need to carry that content forward.

Later, the project began to get some attention again, and the planners wanted to put their final plan (100 pages, PDF, highly technical) back on the site. I pointed out that we still had the old content, including a few paragraphs describing the whole situation in layman’s terms, and that content could be useful to a lot of people who didn’t want to wade into the depth and detail of the final plan. No, the planners said. They didn’t want the other stuff. I argued that we already had it available, and we could review it and make it available with little effort. The planners still weren’t interested, so I gave up, moved on, and the public lost out.

It’s more than doing a clean-up at migration. People don’t know how to write for the web in the first place, so they are often “cleaning up” content that will still be bad. Have you ever seen a mission statement on the home page? It’s totally irrelevant to completing a task. I’ve been working with my clients to get them to identify the major tasks that need to be done on any page and then clearly and concisely presenting information in a way that will allow site visitors to complete the task(s). SMEs need to be taught critical thinking about why people are coming to their web site and how to present the information in a way that assists them in task completion.