Should I build a microsite?
Talk to most people in Digital about microsites and they’ll pull a face of disgust. Why, what’s wrong with microsites?
The answer, really, is nothing. There is nothing wrong with using microsites to solve particular problems. The issues arise when microsites are used to solve the wrong problems. Let’s see if we can figure when to and not use a microsite.
When not to build a microsite
If the microsite:
- won’t have any specific functionality that the main website doesn’t have,
- will have the same branding and identity as the main site,
- takes visitors on a similar journey, and
- is seen by stakeholders as a ‘shiny new thing’ that will allow the organisation to move faster because the existing infrastructure and technology used by the main site is out-of-date and not meeting organisational and user needs.
…then a microsite probably isn’t the right solution.
Sometimes a new microsite is seen as a way to paper over the cracks of existing technology, and if that’s all it’s doing then it’s making the situation worse. However, if introducing a microsite on a new tech stack is part of the plan to iteratively move towards replacing the existing website, then this can often be a better approach than a large single project to replace one big system with another. Building what is needed as those needs are identified is a much better approach.
When to build a microsite
If the microsite needs:
- to meet a completely separate user need than the main site,
- to have specific functionality that the main website doesn’t have, for example customer support and knowledge base functionality,
- to have it’s own branding and identity but be closely associated with the branding and identity of the main site, e.g. for a specific marketing campaign,
- to enable a user journey between to two sites, and/or
- to (or at least wants to) make use of the domain authority of the main site,
…then a microsite could be the right solution.
There are other ways to achieve all of those things on the list, so it doesn’t mean that a microsite is always the right solution, but they can have additional advantages such as diversified infrastructure so that if one website goes down the other isn’t affected, and disadvantages if built by an agency using technology that no one in house has experience with and doesn’t know how to maintain.
When to question the decision to build a microsote
Always. Especially if stakeholders have already decided there needs to be a microsite before any discovery work or requirements gathering has happened.
Should I build a microsite?
If you need to. Keep an open mind, do the discovery work to understand the problem, and then build a microsite if its the right solution.
And take no notice of the looks of disgust from people who make decisions without knowing what problem is being solved.
Social Pedagogy
Social Pedagogy
Weeknotes #216
This week I:
Product strategy thinking
I’ve been thinking a bit more about what a product strategy might look like for what we want to achieve. I wrote up my ideas on how we could grow to reach our targets by using a combination of synchronous and asynchronous delivery of owned and partner courses. My challenge now is to try to put that out of mind and come up with competing strategies.
Digital is a mindset
I went to the Bucks Mind board meeting where, among lots of other things, we reviewed and discussed the organisational response to COVID-19. It gave me lots of opportunity to think about practical connections between the concept of what a digital mindset is and how a small charity might adopt it. Digital isn’t a channel. If you’re thinking that it is, you’re probably thinking that digital equals technology. Technology is a channel. Using Zoom for group support calls is using technology to deliver a service. Digital is a mindset. It includes thinking about how to utilise variability rather than standardisation, continuous improvements and feedback loops, and ‘going where people are rather than getting people to come to us’.
100 stiles
I added the 100th stile to stiles.style. I’m still interested in this project and think it has some longevity, which isn’t always the case for projects I start.
Idea management isn’t project management
I reorganised my Work In Progress page, taking out the kanban board and using it more like a wiki. It feels easier to use for recording and exploring ideas rather than trying to manage ideas as tasks in a project.
I set up Super.so, a static site generator, to connect my Notion workspace to subdomain of my website: workspace.rogerswannell.com, which feels like a good step in working in the open.
I also added RogBot to the workspace. It’s a little out of date but I can so I did.
Notion shipped a ‘backlinks’ feature which displays the pages that link to that page, so I’ve started going through a few pages to link them together. But, should you link up, or link down, or link both ways?
Reflecting on The Children’s Society learning journey through the pandemic
I joined the Children’s Society video presentation about their response to the pandemic. They talked about how the messiness of the reality gets lost in the telling of a coherent story and that systems thinking makes it ok to have no master plan because you’ll never be able to predict the outcomes anyway.
What I learned about email newsletters: some advice for writers
I wrote some thoughts on what I’ve learned being a reader of email newsletters. It was good to get some thoughts together as I’ve been starting to wonder if I should try to write shorter blog posts more often and about things that more normal people might want to read (other than week notes my last blog post was about stigmergy and the third sector shaping a more collective society. I mean who wants to read stuff like that).
I thought about:
What to talk about?
I’ve been asked to take part in a video about digital product charity stuff. I’m really excited but I’m not sure what to talk about. I’ve got plenty of ideas about charity and digital but I’m not sure anyone else is going to find them interesting.
Digital differentiators
I’ thought a bit about ‘digital differentiators’, questions/provocations that highlight the difference between the old industrial ways of thinking and a digital mindset. Questions like “Do you bring your customers/users/beneficiaries to you or do you go to where they are?”, “Do you accept variability or do you aiming for standardisation?”. I don’t know what I might do with the idea but it’s something to add to my digital garden.
What I learned about Tech Ethics
I’ve been thinking about creating a collections page about Tech Ethics to provide a starter guide including people to follow on Twitter, books to read, definitions, current issues, etc. I haven’t yet finished my Service Design collection page, and I did intended to do one about Fundraising too. Anyway, it would be a useful way to wrap up some of what I learned. I also need to finish the blog post I started about charities implementing automated decision-making technology.
I read:
What if Your Company Had No Rules?
I listened to the Freakonomics podcast about ‘No rules rules‘, the book from Netflix about their organisational culture. I think the interesting bit was about how Reed Hastings (Netflix’s CEO) learned from mistakes he’d made in previous companies in figuring out what kind of culture he wanted, but needed Erin Meyer who knew about creating company cultures to actually make it happen.
How three non-profits won with NoCode
It’s interesting to read about some of the uses and challenges for non-profits using no-code as I’m interested in what it can do for digital in the charities. I have a sense that although it may be easier to learn and quicker to deploy, a new technology doesn’t solve a charities technology problems. And I need to find some time to learn how to use Bubble or some other no-code tool to actually build something (and a good idea for what to build).
Digital gardening & tools for thinking
In learning more about creating more digital thinking space and ways of collecting and organising information, and devloping ideas I’ve been reading Building a digital garden by Tom Critchlow, Maggie Appleton’s Digital Garden, Buster Benson’s notes, Brendan Schlagel’s Canonize: Creating a Personal Canon, and the Zettelkasten method, a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas, which is the concept behind Roam.
Some people tweeted:
Why Map, Even?
David Holl tweeted: Some takeaways on what I’ve gotten from learning Wardley Mapping. He talks about the speed of change and how Wardley mapping is useful for visualising ideas in order to see risks and opportunities. Ben Mosir’s 100 reasons to learn Wardley Mapping thread is interesting too.
Your voice matters
Afsa tweeted: I intend to share five things today as part of my goal to get consistent with writing & be visible. I hope my learning & inspirations will inspire some of you to join me. Your voice matters. I’m always impressed by the ‘working in the open’ and ‘self-reflective experiential learning’ that I see on Twitter, and I think setting goals around sharing, writing consistently and being visible are an excellent way to do it, but the really interesting bit in Afsa’s tweet is the last sentence. To me, it says you should be open and share your experiences and what you learned from them for others.
The meta value chain
Jack Butcher tweeted about the book he illustrated: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. The thread contains quotes from Naval’s tweets, podcasts, blog posts, etc., including “Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.”, “Impatience with actions, patience with results.”, and . You know the internet knowledge value chain has gone meta when someone blogs about someone else’ tweet about someone else’s book about things someone else said.
What I learned about email newsletters: some advice for writers
Why write a newsletter?
Newsletters are the big things at the moment. Blog readership is down. So the logic of email newsletters is that people are more likely to read your content if you a) get them to subscribe to your newsletter because they are already making an investment, and b) send your content to them rather than expecting them to come to your blog.
The business owner/marketer idea behind newsletters is building an audience and collecting email addresses. It’s an owned audience, different from an audience built on a social media site. If you choose to move to a different email newsletter platform you can take your audience with you. If you choose to move to a different social media platform you have to start with no audience.
Does that strategy actually play out over time? We won’t know until the popularity of newsletters declines and we all move on to something else. The same idea used to be thought of for blogs and RSS feeds. If you really want to build an audience (because you have something to sell them) then do it through multiple channels.
I started subscribing to newsletters because I wasn’t getting enough good stuff to read just by scrolling through Twitter. So if you’re writing a newsletter that should tell you two things about me as an audience; a) I want to read good content, and b) I’m to lazy to go looking for it myself.
What should you write about?
Fixed or flexible subject? Should you write about only one subject (or one subject per newsletter and have multiple newsletters) or should you write about a few different things. As a reader, it depends on why I’ve subscribed. Did I subscribe to you because I think you’re an interesting person and I want to hear what you have to say, or did I subscribe to the subject because that’s what I’m interested in. Personally, I’d rather subscribe to someone who is interesting even if they sometimes write about something I’m not interested in. And typically, writing is interesting when its about the intersection of two things that don’t normally go together.
How often should you send?
Fixed or flexible schedule? Should you send your newsletter at same time every week or whenever you’ve got something to say? I’m sure most of the newsletters I get have a publishing schedule but I don’t pay enough attention to know. I’d rather get good newsletters than regular newsletters, but in most cases your audience won’t even notice (unless they are paying you) so don’t worry about it too much.
So writers have a choice: fixed schedule fixed subject, fixed schedule flexible subject, flexible schedule flexible subject, or flexible schedule fixed subject. How you choose depends on how much you have to write about and how much time you have to write it.
What makes newsletters unique?
Some newsletters aren’t really newsletters, they just an intro to a blog post and a link. These are missed opportunity. Only one of the newsletters I subscribe to does this and I hardly ever click the link. It’s ok to link to a blog post version of the newsletter (in fact I’d recommend it as it makes sharing or bookmarking easier) but the days of newsletters just being an acquisition channel have passed. Newsletters are a distribution channel.
Newsletters are less temporary than a tweet but less permanent than a blog post. Personally, I want content in newsletters that is of blog post quality, I don’t want to read stuff you’re testing out to figure out whether to write a blog post about it (and you probably aren’t going to learn anything useful if that’s your tactic because newsletters suffer from the information good value problem; I only know if it’s any good after I’ve read it, and so I’ve read it even if it was rubbish or the idea was nonsense).
Newsletters provide an immediate way to distribute medium to high quality content to an invested audience. Make the most of it.
What makes your newsletter unique?
It’s easier to stop going to a blog than it is to unsubscribe from a newsletter, but its still not that hard to unsubscribe from a newsletter. I guess there’s an argument for ensuring your writing stands out, whether through the subject matter, your take on the subject, your writing personality, or whatever it is that makes someone recognise your writing.
Adding to the point above about whether I’m subscribing to you (the person with interesting things to say) or the subject you are talking about, I guess it’s a bit of both, but it’s you that makes your newsletter memorable. Of all the newsletters I subscribe to there are only a few where the personality of the writer comes out in the writing, and these are the only newsletters where I can tell you the name of the person who sends them. That might be an interesting measure of success; does your audience like ‘you’ enough to look you up on twitter and follow you without you asking them to?
Right-sizing solutions
Right-sizing solutions