With these tips, your association's site can stay ahead of the curve and be at its best. Get the tips here.
Thoughts from Blend Interactive
One of Blend’s core values is a dedication to advocacy and progress — to expand upon and give back to the community that fuels us. This is where those thoughts live.
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So ... What Is Discovery?
Building a website is like building a house — each decision is built upon the decisions that came before. Just as an architect doesn’t just throw a number at you and begin working on blueprints, we don’t begin working on a project until we fully understand the scope. We do that through our discovery process.
The Need for Content Operations
We implement content management as a practice, and we've seen two patterns over and over again: organizations are either not prepared to use, or not fully using, the CMS.
Chapter 12: Write for People and Machines Off-site link
So, we need a new website? The easy question is, “Now what?” The harder question is, “How did we get here?” Gain buy-in on the reasons behind a new project, define the problem in a way that gains traction, and avoid some early red flags along the way.
Chapter 11: Model Your Content Off-site link
Content takes many shapes and connects in many ways. How these shapes and connections manifest – both in how they relate to the editorial and design model and in how they are converted into data that a content management system can manage – has considerable impact on every subsequent stage of the project.
Chapter 10: Organize Your Content Off-site link
Your site won’t just magically arrange itself. Instead, you must provide organization in a way that speaks to those who visit your site. What labels do they expect? How do they get from one section to another? How do they hone in on an information scent?
Chapter 9: Develop a Strategy for Your Content Off-site link
Content drives business goals, which means content drives your site. For content that needs to be changed, content that does not yet exist, and even content that will stay the same, we need a strategic plan that provides both high-level direction and a more detailed review of messaging and function.
Chapter 7: Know Your Content Off-site link
One of the challenges in rebuilding any website is figuring out what to do with the existing content. But before you can make any decisions, you simply need to know what it all is. And once it’s unearthed and exposed, then you need to decide what information is relevant and worth recording, determine a method to store this information, and decide how (or if ) you want to keep it updated over time.
Understanding Customers: Data, Journeys and Insights
In advance of Now What? Workshops, we’re featuring short interviews with our smart and wonderful workshop speakers. This week, we talk to Jon Crowley about analytics and metrics — and how to use metrics to make better content decisions.
Web Accessibility: A Primer
Web accessibility has become a legal hot topic, but it’s also integral to creating a useful and usable web presence. This primer is designed to help you get a high-level view of what web accessibility is, how it affects your customers, and a little bit about what can be done to make sure our sites are accessible for everyone.
Build Your Digital Writing Toolbox
In advance of Now What? Workshops, we’re featuring short interviews with our smart and wonderful workshop speakers. This week, we talk to Scott Kubie about the idea of a digital writing toolbox — and what a toolbox does to help writers get better footing and facilitate collaboration.
Beyond Blend.
Blend doesn’t just write here: we also write books, create videos, and dive deep into our individual disciplines. Check out some of our external sources of knowledge.
The Web Project Guide
A phase-by-phase look at the web design and development process, providing context to each step.
Coding with Bob
A YouTube series by our director of development, focusing on .NET coding and Optimizely development.
Eating Elephant
A blog about content strategy, information architecture, and understanding user needs.