Web Content Management – a best practice guide for housing associations
By Robert McCarthy, Managing Director, GOSS Interactive

Housing Associations (HAs) face a constant challenge in communicating and engaging with local tenants, whilst providing informative, interactive, useful and most importantly, accessible information. A Housing Association’s website is central to its communication strategy and provides a tool for communication and transaction as well as a ‘shop window’ for the organisation. Therefore it is crucial that HAs adopt best practice when designing and developing their websites. Taking an approach that reflects, re-evaluates and responds to excellent web experiences in the public and private sectors can result in a much improved online offering.

While website development and maintenance present a number of challenges, there are some simple rules that can provide a framework for best practice and make the outcome of managing content on a website cost effective for the HA while providing a high quality service to the tenant.

Finding your way
As a rule, people visit their local Housing Association website for a purpose; they do not want to spend time browsing but want to carry out a transaction or find a specific piece of information. People are impatient and, if the information required cannot be easily accessed, they are likely to turn straight to the contacts page and pick up the phone. So, put links to the most used services on the home page so that they can be completed quickly, using clear descriptions such as ‘Click here to pay your rent’ for added ease of use.

But how can the navigation of a site be measured? How do we know that people are finding what they’re looking for? Continuous testing is the key to user insight. Using web analytics packages to look at user traffic and test user journeys enables HAs to answer some important questions: are users hitting the expected site pages? Are they taking the routes anticipated? Web analysis reports will show the way people navigate around the website, allowing you to adapt and update the site according to customer needs.

Keeping it real
A Housing Association website needs to be updated constantly. It must evolve and improve as an on-going project to remain current and dynamic. Devolved content contribution, i.e. many people updating specific areas of the site, means that it is potentially more problematic to sustain consistency and best practice. Robust parameters can be set to regulate how, when and who updates the website. Powerful Web Content Management (WCM) systems can also specify the types of content that contributors need to add to a page, in pre-defined areas, to ensure consistency. This guarantees that all employees understand what is expected when updating and maintaining the website.

Connecting with the people
One of the biggest challenges facing Housing Associations is how to strike the right balance between accessibility and performance. From a communications perspective, the website needs to present a number of complex issues and processes; everything from reporting damage, to updates on major new builds. A website demands that information is presented in a concise manner that is clear and easy to understand, to ensure engagement of the tenant. So while it is necessary to provide a high volume of information on some issues, this can be broken down in sections and subsections, with links to download larger documents. Keep it jargon free, and use the kind of language you would expect to hear on the street. Be creative in displaying a process or procedure; where appropriate, use video, audio and interactive help to guide the user around the site to meet their needs.

The Web 2.0 generation
The use of ‘Web 2.0’ technology on Housing Association websites opens up a range of ways to engage with the whole community, not just with younger people. Web 2.0 applications add a rich layer of dynamic content that all users can enjoy. However the implementation can cause problems, as applications that rely on JavaScript may not meet accessibility guidelines. Tools to consider which can improve the appearance and engagement of a site include searches of external agencies, using RSS to publish local news and events, or incorporating social networking through social bookmarks and links with groups such as Facebook. Map-based information allows local amenities to be displayed, centred on the home post-code of an individual citizen.

With the role of HAs’ websites constantly evolving and the needs of tenants changing, the management and maintenance of the websites will remain a challenge. New WCM technologies combined with widespread use of broadband internet will mean an even greater role for the HA website in the provision of local information, key services and citizen transactions.

Top tips to best practice
• Place the tenant at the centre
• Ensure the most used services are accessible from the home page
• Test continuously – and act on the results
• Use dynamic workflow processes for consistency and improved efficiencies
• Don’t use jargon
• Use Web 2.0 applications to promote engagement
• Provide an enhanced tenant account

www.gossinteractive.com