I’ve commissioned a corporate website redevelopment for Nacro, which will be mobile-first.
I’m running the development process along Agile principles. I’m an Agile project management practitioner and I find the process is appropriate to this project as it is geared towards prototyping and early testing, which I think will be vital in building a website that meets the diverse needs of its audiences. The strategic approach looks likely to be decided in-house, through workshops, rather than by involving an external agency. This is partly because, during the consultation phase, especially when talking to the senior team, it became clear that there was consensus on a particular approach to the structure so I felt it would be useful to build prototypes very early in the project to see how this could work in practice.
Audience research suggests that mobile and tablet formats will soon predominate, even for target groups who have no regular access to a computer because when they do go online, it is likely to be via tablets at one of the organisation’s centres. Funders and other key professional audiences will be on devices too, maybe multi-screening. Therefore prototyping and agreeing on a simple, mobile version is a priority. Prototyping came in again when I tested the website architecture with user groups.
The project has been defined with the chosen web development company who are bringing further innovation and great ideas from other sectors.