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