FCM Blog

Partnership Models: Project 5002

San José/Evergreen Community College District's (SJECCD) Workforce Institute in California developed a pilot project as part of its Green Innovation Challenge Grant. The project engages regional businesses and residents with the goal of their adopting and utilizing practices in energy efficiency. The grant focuses on two primary areas: 1) training Silicon Valley's unemployed and underemployed workers in efficient energy services; and 2) providing information about rebates and incentives to home and business owners to improve the demand for efficient energy products and services.

The team used a customer-centric model to gather input from the voice of the customer through business and residential surveys that collected data about the customer's knowledge of efficient energy solutions and the perceived barriers to implementing these solutions. Based on the research, the team used a peer-to-peer education model and designed residential and commercial community champion toolkits, a video, and a microsite to meet its objectives.

Key partner projects include the Workforce Institute, Going Evergreen, County of Santa Clara, Ecology Action, EcoEnergy Loans, Energy Upgrade California and Konnect Marketing. Click here to check out the project video.

How Much Should a Customized Website Cost?

This is a question that we get asked on a weekly basis. The short answer is that there is no "set cost" for a customized website. The cost of a website is directly related to the number of pages and the type of functionality that is desired (e.g. online forms, event registration or purchases, an organizational calendar, intranet, etc).

There are many reasons why an organization may want a new website or a refreshed one, so it is important to understand the full process for developing an effective website that ultimately will support operational goals as well as attract and engage target audiences. While there are no hard and fast rules as to how much a customized website should cost, here are some clear guidelines to help you know if you are getting a bid that is within a reasonable range.

Required Expertise

So often organizations seek out the assistance of a web developer to build a customized website when there are actually five specific skill sets to maximize your return on investment.

1. Marketing and Communications – A specialist in branding, marketing and communications should be part of the site development team. These professionals have expertise in a) understanding how to objectively garner market intelligence (i.e. through customer surveys, focus groups, usability studies); b) developing appropriate and targeted messages based on market segments; and c) creating a sitemap that is intuitive, easy to navigate and customer-focused. Your website is a key component of your communications toolkit and should package your service offerings in a manner that positions the organization accurately and effectively in the marketplace.
2. Web Design – The web designer is responsible for the look-and-feel of the website and translating the desired features from the sitemap into actual design mock-ups that best reflect the organization's brand. The web designer delivers files to the web developer, who actually builds the site. Designers and developers can be the same person, but understand that designing and developing are two very different skill sets. Additionally, mobile website design should be in the portfolio of the selected web designer.
3. Web Development – Web developers actually code the site, perform testing and can install tracking software and other tools to support site performance and maintenance.
4. Site Promotion/Search Engine Optimization – You must promote your website in order for it to have the best chance of reaching your target audiences. Experience in the utilization of promotional tools such as Google AdWords, as well as understanding how search engines go about indexing your site so that it ranks high in their search results, are critical skills that must be brought to bear in order for your website to be successful.
5. Social Media Integration & Mobile – Your website is no longer the only Internet-based communications medium at your disposal. Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others have become important tools for engaging your target audiences. Tools and techniques to integrate these networks with your website should be utilized, and the skills to achieve effective integration must be considered in selecting the right team to build your website.

Whatever bid you are receiving, make sure that you ask for resumes of the individuals to ensure that they have the adequate amount of expertise in each of these areas (preferably seven years or longer). Check customer references and ask if the team has performed on time and on budget.

Prepare Your Requirements

Think through some of the preliminary questions so that you can scope the project accordingly to ensure an orderly and accurate bidding process. The more ambiguous the requirements, the wider the range of price points you will receive which makes it challenging to compare.

1. If you have an existing site that you are redesigning, have you tracked how well the site has performed using web analytics tools such as Google Analytics? This may help in understanding what sections of the site should be kept and those that should be eliminated.
2. Have you identified your target audiences for the site – those that receive services, those that are required for partnership and key influencers of your mission?
3. What is the desired call to action for each of these target audiences?
4. Have you identified current and future products and services and/or information for these target audiences?
5. What are your goals for the website and how do you measure if the site is working as intended?
6. How can the website better fulfill the outreach objectives of your organization?

These questions start the process for building a "customer-centric" website that is highly driven by what customers need and desire. FCM has developed an eBook on this topic that may be downloaded on our website called Customer-Centric Web Building to help you better understand how to tap into your customers' opinions in order to build an optimal website.

Is the Bid Accurate?

Request a line item budget for each component that the vendor proposes to deliver in order to meet your stated requirements. This includes an estimate of time allocated and costs for the following:

• planning meetings, gathering data and soliciting customer input
• graphical and navigational design, with a stated number of mockups to be delivered before you make your final selection
• content sourcing from within the organization, and original writing when required
• coding of static-content pages - one hour per page is a good rule of thumb; if you have an extraordinary number of pages on the site, then understand that it will take time to develop content and write content specific to each audience segment
• coding of non-static pages and the functions contained within (registration forms, calculations, updateable calendars, etc.)
• site promotion and search engine optimization
• social media integration, including a description of the type and nature for each social network
• implementation of reporting and measurement tools, such as Google Analytics

By having this level of detail in each bid, you will be able to examine the hours allocated to each task, and moreover the degree of thought that went into each vendor's bid. Price points for each of the areas of expertise are going to cover a wide range. An experienced vendor with excellent references and an impressive portfolio is going to be at the high end. The bottom line is that you pay for the skills and experience that will deliver a quality product that meets your organization's stated goals.

Check out FCM's portfolio of websites and social media integration, along with free tools and resources to help you better understand how to create an exceptional website.

Why Strategic Planning Gets a Bad Rap

Oh no! Is it that time of year again? Do we have to put together another strategic plan? Didn't we create one last year, and the year before that, and the year before that? Whatever happened to it? Do you have it?

These are just some of the comments that could indicate that your organization may not be using the right strategic planning process, and some of the reasons why strategic planning gets a "bad rap".

A strategic plan is not a document that gets written or updated once a year and then put on a shelf to collect dust. If done correctly, the strategic plan itself should serve as a highly effective "operations manual" to guide everyone in the organization in day-to-day operations and decision making processes. It's just as much a communications tool as it is an actual planning tool, to ensure organizational alignment and consistency, from top to bottom, in your vision, mission and goals.

Make the investment to update and enhance the strategic plan each year, including revisiting the mission, vision and values. The strategic plan is the road map for each individual in the organization to follow. The mission, vision, and values should have no room for interpretation, so that there is clear direction and alignment for everyone in the organization. There should be a clear flow in the strategic plan from the mission, to the goals and objectives, to measures and targets, to the tactics and processes developed to achieve the goals, and to each individual's roles and responsibilities as part of the organization. Every person needs to have a clear line of site of how their daily activities contribute to the vision and mission of the organization.

Additionally, use your strategic plan as your basic working document for continuous process improvement. Update it yearly and review your progress against the plan quarterly. If you find the plan is not on track to achieving your goals, use a basic problem solving process to identify the problems, measure and analyze the data, create potential solutions, determine the best solution, implement the solution, and make the necessary adjustments to the plan as required.

The strategic plan is one component of FCM's organizational ecosystem, a brand alignment process that contains five, interrelated components resulting in a high performing organization. As with any ecosystem, one component cannot thrive without the other. By aligning business processes with a brand strategy, the organizational ecosystem translates to outstanding market position to attract the right funders, partners, and customers needed for organizational success. Let FCM help you build a comprehensive organizational ecosystem with a strategic planning process that gets everyone pointed in the right direction, is used to drive operational excellence and facilitates you in seeing the realization of your vision.

To view FCM's ecosystem, click here.