Now that the project is mostly complete, and all web sites have been migrated from Collage to echoCI, we'd like to get a better idea for improvements in users' experience with the new system.
This morning, the results of the Web Content Management (WCM) survey were sent to the Core Group for review. There were 136 total responses from the community.
There weren't many surprises revealed by the survey; it helped to clarify and confirm many existing perceptions. The results will be especially useful in the future, as we now have a benchmark for the level of satisfaction with our current WCM system.
Here are some things we observed in the results:
Many of our web content creators don’t have a lot of prior experience working on web sites. Less than 50% of respondents who are currently using the system had ever worked on a Web site before.
People with less web experience seem to like the WCM more. Collage users who have beginner-level web skills or who had never worked on a web site prior to Collage are 17-39% more satisfied with Collage than people that have prior experience working on web sites.
Our WCM users probably don't have sufficient modern web design skills. While 70% of respondents claim that they have at least a beginner’s understanding of the principles and practices of modern web design, and 80% consider themselves "intermediate" or "advanced" for most Windows + MS Word skills, the results suggest that only 20% likely possess the skills to successfully perform modern Web design tasks.
Overall satisfaction with the system is largely neutral,with the remainder closely split with a slight edge to satisfied users.
Most respondents consider our current WCM easy to use, and like the consistency it creates. Most positive comments about Collage’s strengths were about ease of use and consistency.
Respondents remarked on these weaknesses of our current WCM (in order of importance):
We're received 91 replies to date; thank you to those CI employees that have participated in the WCM survey thus far. For those that haven't, the survey will be open through the end of October. We appreciate all feedback; we want to make sure that we're selecting a system that best fits the needs of the University community, and we can only do that if people tell us what they need, what works and what doesn't.
The review of products Phase 1 of the evaluation and selection process will begin soon.
The 2009 WCM Survey was sent out this afternoon to all CI employees via campus email. We look forward to hearing back from the community about the current system and the features that we should focus on in a new system.
Regardless of which system is selected, key policy and procedure issues need to be resolved prior to system implementation. These include answers to questions such as: