Getting Started
Getting Started
If you think you might need a Web Express website, the following steps outline the process to get started with a new Web Express website.
Step 1: Determine if a Web Express site is right for your needs. Step 2: Plan your site strategy and create your content. Step 3: Learn how to use Web Express. Step 4: Submit a site request. Step 5: Build your site. Step 6: Launch your site. Step 7: Maintain and optimize your site.
- Use case: In general, if you need a digital marketing home for public content that supports an approved CU Boulder goal, a Web Express site might be the right tool. If you think Web Express might not be the right tool for your needs, OIT offers a variety of other tools and services that might better meet your needs.
- Site types: Review the list of acceptable site types on Web Express and see if your needs fit into one of these categories. Not all site types should use Web Express, and for those we have these recommendations:
- Private team/department sites: SharePoint Online
- Official student group sites: Buff Connect
- Official course websites: Canvas.
- Personal student websites: CU Boulder's instance of Google Sites.
- Maintenance: Managing and maintaining a website requires time and attention. Make sure you have team members that can dedicate the time and attention to managing and maintaining a website on an ongoing basis.
- Existing sites: Consider if there is already another CU Boulder website that would be a more appropriate home for your content. Think about it from your audience’s perspective and what might make most sense for them. You can always reach out to websupport@colorado.edu if you’re unsure if there’s an existing site that might work better for your content.
The Basics
- Plan your site strategy: Use your business goals and any available research to inform the strategy for your site. This will help you think about your site as a strategic tool to support your audiences’ journey. Consider taking the short LinkedIn Learning course “How to Plan Your Website” if you’re not sure where to get started on a site strategy. LinkedIn Learning courses are available to all CU Boulder staff, faculty and students.
- Create your site structure: Using your site strategy and business goals, create the structure for your site. If you’re unfamiliar with information architecture, consider taking the LinkedIn Learning course “UX Foundations: Information Architecture” to learn the foundations of information architecture.
- Content creation: Use your site’s information architecture to begin creating the content you’ll need to build your site, such as copy, photos, videos, etc.
More Advanced Steps
- Research: If you have resources available, consider conducting research to inform your site strategy, information architecture and content plan. This might include conducting a peer analysis, stakeholder interviews or user journeys, among many other types of research.
- Content audit: If you are redesigning an existing site or merging multiple existing sites together, consider conducting a content audit, which is a systematic review of all of a website's content, including its performance, quality and how well it is supporting business goals. If you would like a download of an existing site’s content to conduct an audit, reach out to websupport@colorado.edu.
- Demo site: Check out the Web Express demo site to get a better sense of the foundational elements that the tool employs.
- Training site: Request a training site to get into the platform
- Tutorials and documentation: Check out our tutorials and documentation for hands-on training.
Request form: Once you’ve learned how to use Web Express, complete the site request form to request a sandbox site to begin building your site. Note that this is different from a training site, which is only used for training and to get hands-on experience with the platform before diving into a production site.
Site building: If your site request was approved, you’ll receive a sandbox site where you can use the content you created in Step 2 to build your pages. You will be able to share this site with other stakeholders for reviews and approvals as you’re working on it.
- Pre-launch checklist: Review the pre-launch checklist to make sure your site is ready to go.
- Submit a launch request: Once you feel like your site is ready to go live, submit the site launch request form. Be sure to account for 5-10 business days for your request to make it through the launch process.
- Maintain: After your site is launched, maintain the content to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date.
- Audit: Periodically do a site health check to evaluate your site and ensure it’s still supporting your business goals, including checking your links, doing an accessibility check and cleaning up unneeded content and users .
- Analyze and optimize: Consider adding Google Analytics to your site to get a better understanding of how users are actually navigating and interacting with your site.