Since launching in 2012 the blog has seen a steady increase of posts and visitors, but we felt it had outgrown its old structure and focus. It was time for a change.
We started with a creative session to identify audiences and objectives, and looked at our analytics and user engagement.
Based on the findings, the key improvements we focused on were:
- Communicating clearly that the blog is a showcase for work across the University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden
- Making the blog more visual
- Improving search and accessibility
- Ensuring the blog works across multiple devices
- Enabling better sharing across social media
- Profiling authors
Working with creative agency Virtual Pudding, we developed the blog and user-tested throughout. Some learning points along the way:
Letting go
We focused on simplifying the blog and ensuring it met our objectives. While the old blog contained a lot of contextual information, we concentrated on the key-objectives and removed a lot of clutter.
Finding the right words
In parallel to developing the new blog, we worked with online content specialists Sookio on a content strategy, which looked at the structure, naming standards and categories.
Getting to write
Content is the key and we have fantastic work going on across the museums and Garden that we want to showcase. To ensure we’re profiling the work of our staff and volunteers as effectively as possible we’ve created author profiles on the blog. The challenge for our colleagues is finding the time to write, and whilst we can’t really help with this we can support them in writing content. As part of their content strategy work Sookio designed and delivered blog writing workshops to inspire and provide top tips and tricks for our staff.
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