The Internet Strategy and Web Services team provides strategy, leadership and support for the growth of hopkinsmedicine.org. The team leads core projects for the strategic growth of the enterprise. Additionally, they consult with all internal stakeholders on a project-by-project basis. Customized plans are created as the result of an engagement and discovery process to understand each clients' goals.
Project Engagement and Project Management
Before any project is initiated on hopkinsmedicine.org, potential clients meet with the Web Team to engage in an engagement and discovery process that identifies goals for the project, major stakeholders and their involvement in the project, considerations for Johns Hopkins Medicine as a whole, what tools are already available to develop the project, and consideration of custom development, among other factors.
Most web projects require coordination among a number of parties and stakeholders. The Web team uses an Agile method to complete projects, an approach that allows for smaller, more efficient projects with an opportunity for earlier success and evaluation as well as an ongoing commitment to continued growth. The Web Team provides project management services to accommodate this approach.
Generally, we begin the engagement process by collecting information prior to our first meeting, working with a primary contact to lay the foundation for our first meeting. The web team does not typically bill for this phase of the project. Instead the goal is to produce an estimate to begin work.
The Website Production Process
Please review our step-by-step guide for a complete explanation of the website production process, what your team can expect and how you play a part in the project.
Web Development, Branding, User Experience Design, and Information Architecture
The Web team considers enterprise-wide branding and user experience goals and marries those with strategic goals for developing individual web sites for departments, divisions, offices, and affiliates in an effort to create a simple, consistent experience for all visitors to hopkinsmedicine.org.
Information architecture is a critical component of the Johns Hopkins Medicine web presence because it:
- Helps users find the information that they are seeking
- Lets users know where they are, and where they have been
- Improves users' experience on our web sites
Consistency of information architecture and design across all departments, divisions, offices, and affiliates:
- Prevents users having to re-learn how the site is structured (it speeds up their interactions and navigation) or to learn as much about the structure of the organization when seeking information
- Provides reassurance that a user is still in the same place
- Portrays an overall impression of professionalism and reliability
- Facilitates improved writing, publishing and maintenance
- Supports the implementation of XML, CSS and other technologies that rely on structured content
Parties are invited to e-mail webcenter@jhmi.edu to initiate a project. A member of the web team will follow up to gather information and determine an approach to the project. The discovery process usually takes a series of phone calls and in-person meetings that lead to the development of a project plan that allows for application, information architecture, content development and other needs specific to each client.
Web Content Development and Search Engine Optimization
The content portion of the web development process is vital to the overall success of the website. Writing for the web is very different from other types of writing because web users scan pages quickly and have fast access to endless pages of competing information.
Our team communicates effectively and efficiently in a way that captures a reader’s attention and helps him quickly find what he’s looking for—all while conveying targeted marketing messages that service our clients’ business goals.
Web content development services include:
- Writing fresh web content (sources may include in-person interviews, secondary research, and existing web content/collateral materials)
- Revising existing web content to adhere to web writing best practices
- Search engine optimization (including keyword research)
- Research and content auditing
- Pre- and post-launch site analytics
A key component of our content development service is search engine optimization (SEO). Put simply, SEO is the practice of writing web content in a user-friendly way that makes it easier to find through search engines. Following established SEO guidelines is the best way to improve search engine rankings, and thus, improve the possibility that a web page will be found by consumers looking for a particular service. Our team stays up to date with the latest SEO industry news so we can incorporate ever-changing best practices into our content development process.
We strongly encourage clients to take advantage of our content development services as a part of overall web builds. However we do offer a la carte content and SEO services for sites that have already been migrated onto the hopkinsmedicine.org platform. Contact us to discover the various options for your website.
Search Engine Marketing
Different than search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) is a paid approach to buying top ad placements on search engines and relevant content sites to drive traffic to strategic messages and content.
This approach is often recommended to drive market growth and increase business rapidly. The team provides strategy, manages paid campaigns, develops content, provides mini-site or landing page construction, and reports on analytics in relation to paid search engine marketing on top search engines and web sites.
Web Maintenance Growth
The web team provides support services for all aspects of site maintenance including training and maintenance services. Departments with large web sites may decide to hire someone on staff or embed the person within the web team. Web team staff provide web content management system training to those individuals who are designated as their site's web master. Classroom training is scheduled in sessions throughout the year. JHM clients receive information about training as a site is nearing completion.
If a JHM client is unable to maintain a website themselves we can maintain the site for the client for $95/hour. The team performs all template changes, along with complex updates such as uploading multimedia (video, podcasts, photo banners).
Social Media
Johns Hopkins Medicine has centralized social media outlets on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Additionally, the team provides strategy and plans for developing individual social media outlets on all platforms including Twitter, Facebook and in blogs for individuals, departments, divisions, offices, and affiliates, as well as works with you to develop paid social media campaigns.
Additional Services
The team provides a variety of additional services, including registration and management of web domain names; search engine management; website analytics; and web consulting. Johns Hopkins Medicine Marketing and Communications manages the registration and renewal of website domain names for Johns Hopkins Medicine-affiliated departments, organizations, institutes and centers.
These JHM domain names are indexed by our search engine, which appears on all Hopkinsmedicine.org pages. Finally, JHM clients may receive web traffic reports and/or access analytics information online.