Case study: Content strategy using wireframes
Kinetic, a design company in Saskatoon, was tasked with designing a new investor relations website for Theralase, a publicly traded company that produces and markets therapeutic laser devices. Kinetic understood the magnitude and complexity of the information that needed to be presented on the site and came to zu for a content strategy.

The deliverable was a 36-page document consisting mostly of wireframes, and notes on associated content, for every page of the site. Kinetic provided us with plenty of source content, ranging from the existing site to investor presentations supplied by Theralase. One of our Information Architects drafted a proposed site map and Kinetic created home page and sub page designs. Once Theralase had approved these, we built wireframes for each site page, with detailed notes about where to place content (based on the approved designs), what the content would express, and where the information would come from.

The resulting document was “just what we’d hoped for,” as lead designer Zach Perkins remarked. They’d wanted something they could hand to a web writer, who could then write meaningful web copy that would be clear, unambiguous and audience appropriate.

The takeaway
Kinetic recognized the need for a strategy to develop content for a client’s website before the actual web writing ever began. Because their client, Theralase, was a publicly traded company, they didn’t want to risk designing a site that didn’t communicate effectively with its various audiences—investors, practitioners, and consumers. Now, with a wireframed content strategy in hand, they have the tools they need to create meaningful content for a site targeted specifically to users.

Lydia Jane Stinson
Born April 2, 2009, early in the morning
Weighing in at 5 pounds 9 ounces
Daughter of zu Senior Developer, Rhett Stinson
Cute fact: Refer to picture.

Chloé Carlson Carignan
Born August 11, 2009
Daughter of zu Project Manager, Amanda Carlson
Cute fact: At Chloé’s first birthday she had two pieces of cake. After the sugar set in she licked her aunt’s nose four times, tasted the carpet twice, spun in circles on her bum, then promptly went to sleep.

Asher Tod Yip
Born June 22, 2010 at 8:39am
Weighing in at 7 pounds 4 ounces
Grandson of zu Content Strategist, Susan Bond
Cute fact: Asher had several play dates in his first two months of life… and he slept through them all!

Congrats dad, mom and grandma. And we’ve learned that there are some more little ones expected around here in the next nine months. Keep ‘em coming!

In those eight months, Laurence, a full-time zu staffer, added his own style of creativity, energy, and savvy to the Accounts & Marketing team. He’ll be working fewer hours this fall so he can wear his #11 jersey for one last year as quarterback for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies football team. And the zuCrew will be right behind him, cheering him on.

To send Laurence off in style, we put together this video.

What’s going on
Writing a website isn’t like writing a book or document. In fact, writing content isn’t the same as writing copy. And usually, at the beginning of a project, web content is an unknown quantity.

Agencies and clients alike are used to assuming that writing can happen late in the project, that text can just be popped into elegant page designs modeled around an easy-to-navigate architecture, and poof—a great website is born. But this rarely happens.

When content is written and delivered late in the process, several things can happen:

• Content parts are disconnected from one another.
• Messages aren’t connected to the principle business goals that are the reason for building the website.
• Standards tend to be lower and copy and messaging may be inconsistent or redundant.
• Copy is neglected or forgotten once the site is launched.

What can be done
Every web project should have a strategy for handling content. The strategy can be minimal or more involved, but having even a simple strategy in place ensures the resulting content will be relevant, planned and consistent. It will meet goals and objectives for both the organization creating the site and the visitors using it.

zu employs various levels of strategy for managing content—from audits, analyses and wireframes to hands-on guidance for clients, helping them develop messages and craft web content that is both engaging and useful. Combining information architecture (IA) with content strategy works best for larger, content-heavy web projects.

At the very least, anyone building or redesigning a website needs to know where the content will come from and who will be responsible for creating and maintaining it. This might be one person, or a whole list of people—including subject experts, department heads and marketing personnel—depending on how small or large the organization and proposed site.

If the task seems too daunting to carry out yourself, you can hire an expert to assist with the strategy. That’s what one Saskatoon design agency did. Stay tuned for that story in part 2.

Oliver Leopold Myers
Born November 5, 2009 at 8:35am
Weighing in at 7 1/3 pounds
Son of Levi Myers, zu’s Manager of Strategy & Experience
Cute fact: Oliver’s big sister Aurelia can make him smile no matter how cranky he is.

Will Everett Steinkey
Born December 13, 2009 at 7:29pm
Weighing in at 6 pounds 7 ounces
Son of zu Project Manager, Toby Steinkey
Cute fact: Will says “mmmm” every single time he takes a bite of his cereal.

Marie Hope Dowdeswell
Born May 28, 2010 at 11:59pm
Weighing in at 5 pounds 7 ounces
Daughter of zu Flash Developer, Allan Dowdeswell
Cute fact: Marie is learning to cope with the fact that her sister had about five times as much hair as her.

Terra Lynn Rathie-Wright
Born March 24, 2010 at 12:24pm
Weighing in at 6 pounds 12 ounces
Daughter of zu Developer, Devon Rathie-Wright
Cute fact: Terra likes rolling onto her front but hates being on her front.

Congrats to Levi, Toby, Allan and Devon on their lovely new little ones. What beautiful offspring we seem to produce around here!

Stay tuned for babies galore part 2 when we will introduce you to the rest of the new zu babies.

In the same time period, the physical size of displays has also generally increased but now includes a lot more variety. A decade ago, 15” desktop screens were common, and 20” screens were about the largest in regular use. Today, anything under 19” is uncommon for desktops, with screens ranging up to 30”. But notebooks with smaller screens are everywhere, netbooks with displays even smaller yet abound, and mobile devices proliferate with comparatively tiny screens. Technology solutions have largely helped deal with this disparity, such as the iPhone’s easy zooming feature for web browsing. And with 1024 x 768 as the current default minimum target resolution, it’s really only phones with lower resolutions.

But there’s another, related issue: with the disparity in screen sizes and resolutions comes a compounded variance in pixel density. While a standard desktop 20” widescreen monitor at 1680 x 1050 has a pixel density of 99 pixels per inch, my 15” MacBook Pro running the same resolution is 128PPI. An older 19” CRT at 1024 x 768 is 67PPI, almost half—meaning that elements such as text are physically half as big on the newer screen. And mobile device disparity is even greater: the iPhone 4’s 3.5” display at 640 x 960 is 326PPI.

Designers need to rethink the scales they’ve always used for design. Increasing pixel density means that 10- and 12-pt fonts are basically illegible on many screens. While we’re accustomed to working to the lowest common denominator (for screen resolution), we need to be actively considering higher-end users in terms of pixel density.

One mitigating factor is that most browsers have now adopted the “zoom the entire page” model instead of “make the text larger”, resulting in a better experience for those outliers who we fail with our designs. But relying on technology to compensate for our failure to accommodate our users isn’t a reassuring thought. There is a definite opportunity here for designers focusing on legibility and usability to lead the way on web design trends.

As is the standard approach with this particular client, zu took on a development role in the project. PotashCorp and Creative Fire were on the planning and designing end, and zu offered technical expertise and programming.

“Given the critical importance of our website in excellent stakeholder communications, success or failure in creating a brand new site depended entirely on the strength of the project team,” commented Tim Herrod, Director of Treasury at PotashCorp. “The best websites are a product of the best ideas and execution, and exceptional performance flows only when talented, dedicated people understand, share, and deliver on our vision for excellence. These are the qualities of the zu team, and we have always been fortunate to have such world-class talent locally, working with us.”

About PotashCorp
PotashCorp is the world’s largest fertilizer company and leading potash producer, responsible for approximately 20% of global capacity. With operations in seven countries, PotashCorp is an international enterprise and a key player in meeting the growing challenge of feeding the world.

The goal
Websites go stale quickly. A leader in online investor relations, PotashCorp wanted a website with a cleaner interface, simpler navigation, more consistency for users and lower maintenance costs. From a development perspective, the goal of the project was to reengineer the code to make the site more stable, easier to maintain, and easier to build upon.

Having struggled through cumbersome updates on the site in the past, creating an easy-to-maintain system with lower maintenance costs was a high priority for the development team. The team strived to offer the client a platform in which they could perform updates easily. Part of this involved the integration of zu’s own content management system (CMS), EasyUpdater, which allowed the client to make changes to parts of the site that would require regular updating such as news, career postings, and calendar events.

The challenge
Meeting tight deadlines and coordinating amongst three parties proved to be the greatest challenges during the project. These were addressed in regular meetings between the parties and through enhancing internal systems. zu’s sizable talent base was also used to the team’s advantage, providing the ability to scale up and add additional support as needed.

With a looming deadline and a massive project to tackle, morale was kept high with zu-supplied dinner breaks when working late and the occasional night out after a long day. With some dedicated employees and solid leadership, the team plowed through.

The solution
To achieve the goal of building a system that would be easy to maintain and update, zu expanded the EasyUpdater CMS and modified it to provide needed flexibility while maintaining consistency and reducing costs.

A “flexibly consistent” system was the outcome. It was achieved by using a template-container-block approach to building the pages of the site in which each page was a template with multiple containers. In each container, the user could place any block. A block might be a piece of content, a list, a career posting, a news article, or an upcoming event. The user can create and edit only one block (for consistency), but a block can be placed in any location on the page (for flexibility).

New features
The freshly updated, easy-to-use site, inspired the launch of some additional features:

• DataTool: This allows investors to browse through financial data in the four key areas of financial, sustainability, facilities, and markets. They can select data to graph, export, share, or even save to a personal MyPOT account that can be revisited.
• News: This section has taken on a blog-like approach with all news items, regardless of category, falling into one global news section, allowing visitors to access all company news in one location or filter news postings according to topic.
• Social media: PotashCorp took the opportunity to dive further into the world of social media by linking to two Twitter accounts, @PotashCorp for news and @PotashCorpJobs for career postings; two Facebook pages, one for news and one for careers; and a YouTube page which provides an opportunity for videos to be more widely distributed.

The results
Since the project has launched, PotashCorp has received positive user feedback about the site’s new features. Looking at three month comparative data before and after the launch, site visits increased by 11% and page views grew by 14%.

Overall
The PotashCorp redesign shows how taking care of foundational aspects of websites such as navigation and user interface can transform a site from being merely available to being useful and frequently visited. This philosophy should apply to all web projects, regardless of the project size or budget.

PotashCorp continues to be a leader in online investor relations by adding new features and improvements on an ongoing basis, acknowledging that in the web world, a site is never finished.

My ADD is perfectly tuned for quick hits of comedy and so I find myself constantly scouring YouTube for old tv spots. These set of Holiday Inn commercials have always struck me as extra funny. Similar to FedEx commercials, they play on subtle character driven humour. Nothing over the top, but the comedic execution from the copy to the acting is genius. This campaign is centred around working actor Jerry Lambert, of the now famous PS3 commercials.

But there will always be that little, annoying voice in everyone’s head that whispers doubts and disbelief about every company’s potential for growth. Call it due diligence, corporate distrust, or fear of the unknown, but this voice serves as IROs’ nemesis, chipping away at all the work they’ve put into promoting their company as the ultimate deliverer of shareholder value.

Yet, is the effort enough? More specifically, is the online story that companies are telling an open book, with all elements present to powerfully draw in investors so they not only believe the company’s story but want to tell others?

For it to resonate with your audience, your story needs to be easily accessible, understood and true. Ask yourself, your IR department, and the investors who visit your website:

-Does your website require visitor information prior to giving access? (The equivalent to a salesperson asking me to provide my personal information before I can browse a store for shoes)
-Does it hide the good stuff in PDFs?
-Does it only speak to the past, rather than also proactively discussing the future?

If the answer to these questions is yes, revisions are in order.

Consider Canada’s current place in the world economy. Relatively sheltered from the global recession, Canada is slowly but surely recovering. And so, Canadian companies are positioned to capitalize on this major opportunity once the country recovers and people regain confidence in the markets. But companies need to prepare now for when that time comes, when investors will flood the markets seeking best value, trusting in stories that clearly tell them how they will earn that value. Pen your online tale properly now so that you can be ready to draw these investors in and create believers out of them.

Based on the screenshots below, which organization are you more likely to trust?

The truth is that you would receive the same educational experience from either website above because they are the same institution. The first screenshot is their old site, and the one below is their new site. At a first glance, which one would you have trusted to be a credible educational experience? This quick exercise was to show that a strong web presence is not about manipulation, it’s about accurately reflecting your true self and your business online.

Derek joined a team of seven other young adults and twelve youth from Saskatoon’s Elim Tabernacle that partnered with Mexico’s La Viña (Mexican for vineyard). For nine days the team gave food bags away and made meals for hundreds of people. Any remaining money was given to other feeding projects when they left. The communities didn’t have money and resources so the group would bring in a mobile stage, offer children’s church, and set up a mobile kitchen to feed the entire community. Aside from feeding people, the group found the time to dig several five and a half foot deep, by three and a half foot wide holes for a foundation to a church.

What’s your most memorable story?
“One of the most memorable moments was feeding people at the local Mazatlan dump. Hundreds of people worked at the dump right in the garbage collecting plastic, steel, cardboard and anything else they thought they could sell. They do this because they can’t find a job anywhere else. I was in charge of crowd control for the food line. I’m not going to lie, I got pushed around quite a bit, but the people were overall very nice. They are regular men and women (yes, lots of women and kids worked there too). The only difference is that their job is to collect garbage and they smell kind of funky!”

What’s the story behind these people?
“Most people go to Mazatlan for a vacation and it’s a nice place to do that. What those vacationers often don’t see are the communities of squatters. Thousands of low income Mexicans moved to Mazatlan to try to get jobs in the tourism industry. The problem was, there weren’t enough jobs and these people had nowhere to go. So they built houses on unused land hoping that some day they would be able to buy the land. The other problem is that the houses aren’t houses; they are more like sticks, blankets and old coca-cola tarps – kind of like the forts I used to make in my basement when I was little, except that these people have to live in them.”

What did you gain from this experience?
“It was my 15 minutes of Mexican fame! I would leave feeling like a rock star because when we would ride in the back of the truck home after helping these people all day they would wave and cheer as we drove away.”

“But the bottom line is, I’ve gone on a trip like the Mexico mission before and I will go on more in the future because it helps me to be a more grateful person. I feel our society is extremely possession oriented which inevitably makes us less thankful for what we have. The people that I had the opportunity to help were remarkably happy even though they had very little. I was constantly reminded that, no matter what happens in life, I need to be thankful and content with what I have. It also made me realize how fortunate I am to live in Canada and to have a great new job, and for all the people I get to interact with in Saskatoon and beyond. In the end, I think the people of Mazatlan gave much more to me than I gave to them.”

Here’s to you Derek Robinson!

In part two, Stephanie provides the statistical support to back Ryan’s argument for One Government. She breaks down the demographics of the web to show where people are spending their time online and the most effective ways to leverage these avenues of communication. To provide you with another good resource for current social media statistics, here is a link to a video we showed just after Stephanie’s presentation.

Ryan points out in Part 1 that people in this province and throughout the country are online. It is about time that governments accept this and begin taking steps to reconnect with their people through the web.

The facts
Full name: Saskatoon (city), Saskatchewan (province). Pronounced Sask-acha-wan.
Located here on the map
Population: Around 220,000
Famous people: Gordie Howe, Joni Mitchell, Gene Simmons’ life partners’ parents
Average housing price: ~$250,000
Claim to fame: Berries, bridges, and a Guess Who song

The ‘Saskaboom’ boom pow
Economically speaking, our city and province are on the up and up. Read more about the good times here.

The flourishing downtown
For the first 10 years that I lived here, it seemed that nothing ever happened downtown. But within the last 3 years, the downtown has really come alive. From all the new lounges, condo/lofts, warehouse district revival, and small shops opening up, there’s no shortage of things to do downtown. The American Apparel on 21st put the icing on the hipster cake.

The shopping
If you’re going to be a designer in the city, you need the duds to help you represent. These stores can help: Momentum, Durands, Tonic, Clothes Cafe, Frank & Lucy, Vogue, Mint, Manhattan Casuals, Schmatta. Of course, we have your regular shopping centres that carry your run-of-the-mill brands as well.

The nightlife
Whether you like to relax around a few pints or burn up a dance floor to some bangin’ house and electro, we’ve got you covered. Check out these fine establishments: Scratch, Flint, BarkingFish, Freehouse, Baccus, O’Sheas, Winstons Pub.

The district
Every place has their ‘district’. Ours is called Broadway. A long stretch of ped-friendly blocks where you’ll find plenty of coffee shops, independent stores, and local street acts. It’s where you’ll see the local conforming non-comformists and Elvis Costello look-a-likes.

The art
Saskatoon has a well established art and theatre community, enough to satisfy the quirkiest of niches. Check out: Paved, Mendel Art Gallery, Persephone Theatre, Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon Soaps.

The music
For all you audiophiles, Saskatoon has to have one of the highest number of bands per capita. This makes it uber easy to catch a show on any given day of the week. Check these local spots of regular shows: Amigos, Lydias, Louis’, Buds, Odeon.

The food
If there is one thing my friends say about Saskatoon when they visit, it’s usually “You have an above average amount of beautiful women” followed by “What’s with all the restaurants?” Make sure to check out: Calories, Truffles, Cafe Sola, Scratch, Tusq, the 4 AYCE sushi joints, Samurai, Jakes, EE Burritos, Golden Pagoda, Conga Cafe, Taj Mahal, Red Pepper, and Dim Sum on the weekend. And if cooking is your thing, you’ll be happy to hear about the Farmers Market and Souleio.

The outdoors
Granted, there aren’t any nearby mountains, but what we lack in height we make up for in water. There are nearby beaches, a river that runs through the city, lots of bike and hiking trails, and many large lakes within driving distance. So practice your J-stroke.

The festivals
Like most other major centres, Saskatoon is in full festival mode come summer time. Events you’ll enjoy are: The Jazz Festival, Taste of Saskatchewan, Folkfest, Fringe Festival, and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. I really do like living here. Throughout my travels, I’ve fantasized about moving to much more exotic places, but there’s something about this damn city that makes it hard for me to justify leaving. Take a look around, and I hope to see you soon.

When it comes to organizing content for your website, pretend you’re a composer or an arranger. You write for various sections in an orchestra to make a piece of music—a symphony or maybe an orchestral soundtrack—that’s pleasing to the ear. You have some idea about what you want it to sound like. You think of ways to break that idea into meaningful, memorable parts. Your goal is to fit all the parts together into one harmonious whole.

When you’re coming up with content for your website, it’s no different. You want to keep in mind what’s going on elsewhere so your information isn’t redundant or missing or overemphasized. Like a concertmaster’s solos, or recurring themes in a piece of music, you’ll want your messages properly positioned and linked or reinforced in ways that readers will intuitively understand.

When you’re at a concert, do you think about the structure of the music that you’re hearing? If the composers have done their job right, you won’t even be aware of structure. Your attention will go straight to the music.

Likewise, if the navigation and content of a website are well thought out, users (readers) will be unaware of the architecture and go straight—and effortlessly—to the information they’re looking for.

Comparing web writing to music is just one metaphor for web content creation and development. The important thing is to jump in and look carefully at everything you want to say and why, where and how you want to say it.