Had the pleasure of attending this Level 200 session at the SharePoint Conference yesterday and here's the take home points :
How to measure success when implementing a SharePoint Site :
- conversion rates
- page views per second
- number of visitors
- total time on the site
- find a way to workout the conversion rate (products sold, articles viewed or revenue) - whatever fits
and...If we also use MySites / Social Features
- MySite / Profile usage (how many properties filled in)
- how many status updates?
- how many ratings, tags + comments?
- Once the metrics are defined - baseline and record them where possible, so that targets and success can be measured.
Iterative / Agile methods are usually better with sharePoint as the feedback / response cycle is shorter.
The ideal team needed for a SharePoint project
Technical resources
- Solutions Architect (Chooses the SharePoint features that will be used to solve the business problem).
- SharePoint Developer (Features, Web Parts, solutions, CAML, etc)
- Front end Developer (HTML, JS, JQuery, etc)
- Infrastructure Specialist (Builds the SharePoint Farm out).
Business resources
- Business Sponsor (Product Owner, defines the strategy)
- Project Manager
- Business Analyst (Discusses requirements with the business users, experience of SharePoint is highly ideal).
- Information Architect (Responsible for defining the domain entities, (content types, columns, search config etc)).
- UI Designer - designs a UI that's slick, easy to use and gets the user to where they want to be in as few clicks as possible.
- Graphics Designer - Implements the branding.
- Content Strategist (Copyright editors)
Design Process..
The following steps should be followed when designing a new Intranet/Internet site in SharePoint..
- Define the Information Architecture
- Define the wireframes - Balsamiq mockups
- Design comp - a mockup of the final page (usually done in Photoshop or Expression Design)
- Functional Prototype - HTML and CSS (get the nav working) reuse this in the build phase
- Each of these phases of design will require review and rework after discussing with the technical team.
Mobile Strategy..
- Avoid custom apps unless absolutely necessary
- Create different views using CSS
- Consider using variations to provide different views
Build Process..
- Turn on Publishing Features which gives new page layouts, variations, web parts, and so on.
- Cut the design comps into page layouts / master pages.
- Define the regions that web parts / field controls will need to be dropped into.
- Always start with an existing Master Page and amend it, never make from scratch.
- For Digital Asset Management, use managed metadata to tag each asset. This will allow it to be found more easily, especially for thousands of assets.
- 80% of users will use Search directly from the home page, navigation is often ignored. Get Search configured correctly.
SEO..
- For a public site, use meaningful names and site names so that SEO is improved.
- Content is key - get the right content into SharePoint with good keyword usage.
- Use good page titles
- use meta tags (although I dont think this matters nowadays)
- Keep navigation in plain HTML, give the crawlers chance to move thru the site