Mintec/MineSight® Website Redesign
Communications Plan
Overview
Mintec, Inc. used a web design company a few years ago to design the existing web page. The current site’s design, its limited Cold Fusion-based environment, customer support and overall web editing flexibility has been unsatisfactory. The need for this new web design has been defined as urgent from an executive perspective, as well as from many of the Mintec employees. The Mintec team members assigned as points of contact for the project are Chad Cole, communications coordinator, and Amy Malik, information technology administrator. The current website is hosted on a Windows 2003 server locally.
Goals
Since an in-house Mintec web master/designer does not exist, searching for a local third party vendor for website redesign services is required. Initially we will do a comparative local search for an experienced, affordable, cooperative and Tucson-based vendor. We hope to bring each vendor on-site to review their respective company dynamics initially addressing their (but not limited to):
After reviewing each potential web vendor, we will make a detailed analysis of their qualifications to be distributed to Mintec leadership for their review. Subsequent on-site interviews of the top two or three designers will occur to determine who is chosen.
Once a vendor is determined to best represent Mintec’s website needs, we will begin the process of designing the site. From start to finish, the new website design process is estimated to take eight to sixteen weeks.
Approach
We want to present Mintec’s needs to each vendor in a way that explains our business philosophy as one accustomed to serving more conservative mining industry engineers and mine owners. Things that we want to address for the new site:
We do not have HTML programmers or webmasters per se, however would like to have one Mintec employee act as administrator with full editing access and delegate two to four additional users to update various sections of the site (training, technical documentation, news, etc.). This said, we would like a web architecture that lends itself to the intermediate web user.
The technical support department has accumulated valuable historic client feedback that can be reviewed to contribute to the new web design. In addition, by electronically surveying our clients and employees about specific web changes they would like to see will provide us with critical redesign elements, once a vendor has been determined.
Specific Needs
Website Access/Updating
Presently we are frustrated about how limited we are in modifying content and structure of our site. Understanding that there will always be some limitations to what we can change with any web environment, we must find something much more flexible than the current ColdFusion setting. We also would like to have total control to update or edit everything that can possibly be changed but also rely on a vendor initially, and perhaps in some capacity in the long-term to assist with certain aspects of the website’s more complex updates. The support aspect of the vendor is critical in that we need someone who is local, readily available, reliable, reasonable, affordable and friendly.
Content Management System (CMS)
We are currently using ColdFusion as our CMS and will discard this, adopting a more suitable environment for our needs. Pure HTML, Open Source (often free), ‘off-the-shelf’ (commercial web design software) or a combination of these are possible solutions. We need to select this carefully as this will be one of the few things that we will likely not be able to change without redesigning the site again and this will also determine to what degree we will be able to modify the site’s content.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Our current web-based FTP method has certain limitations, both in appearance and function and should be approached from the clients’ perspective regarding ease of use, speed of file transfers and confidentiality to each client’s individual access to their own data.
Databank/Knowledge Library
Extensive technical documentation taking the form of software updates, white papers, (technical) newsletters, seminar materials and internal/external mining industry news are stored in various forms and need to be compiled, reviewed, organized by public or private material and then stored online for clients to access anytime from anywhere. The format for these documents should be such that the size is minimized (.pdf, for example).
Internal Search Engine
The aforementioned Databank should be easily searchable within our site (and possibly externally for the publicly available documentation). In addition, all aspects of our site should be searchable from within www.mintec.com so that specific content can be found easily.
Search Engine Optimization
Currently our website is not appearing at the top of most searches through search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.). By optimizing how well we can be located online according to various keywords found throughout our new website we will improve our potential market reach and better represent ourselves as the mining software industry leaders we are.
Web Hits Tracking
Incorporating software that will monitor hits—how many people click on various aspects of our site—will show us where we should focus our web development efforts. This may also be something that could be incorporated into SharePoint to understand where employees are most often visiting.
Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts (… oh my!)
Blogs, wikis and podcasts are additional web tools we would like to learn more about and how they would benefit Mintec. Perhaps incorporating the pun on the popular online community MySpace by naming our Blog or Wiki, MineSpace is one idea.
Language Options
Consider implanting language links to take web visitors to translated versions of our site.
FAQ Section(s) (one for clients, one for general public learning about Mintec, Inc.)
Content and Design
Content and design ideas will be developed once a vendor is selected but some initial angles include (but are not limited to):
Interesting factoids (mining history, mineral consumption over a lifetime, mining anecdotes/stories)
Implementation
Once we decide on a web design partner, we will follow an organized research and design plan that we would hope the vendor has already developed and proven worthy for past clients.
Evaluation
By utilizing the client and/or employee surveys collected prior to the design phase, we can align the survey responses to the new web design options, ensuring that everyone’s needs are considered. In addition, by recognizing that our SEO will bring us more web visits, combined with a better web hits tracking system, we can assume that more traffic to the site is a success. Additionally, if the overall technical documentation library is clearly searchable and returns appropriate results, this will be a success as well, as clients have requested this repeatedly. A faster and more efficient file transfer protocol system will also be seen as a success. Secondary surveys could also be sent out post-launch to see what clients and employees like about the new site. Minor changes that may be required to the website done by employees will also
Note: This initial plan is subject to change at any time by Mintec, Inc.
Chad Cole, Communications Coordinator
Mintec, Inc. - Global mining software solutions
520.322.7111 x223
fax: 520.325.2568
cell: 520.275.6343
USA, Canada, Chile, Peru, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Thailand, China
USA - 3544 E. Fort Lowell Rd, Tucson, Arizona 85716-1705