Broward College’s public-facing websites/microsites are governed by a distributed governance model, where web page content management is dispersed across a number of content delivery teams. 

The following guidelines, which may apply to other Broward College digital products and/or be adopted by product owners, refer explicitly to the Broward College public (non-gated) website—broward.edu—and/or public-facing microsites hosted within the current Content Management System. Digital products outside the scope of this document are subject to their own governance guidelines and workflows not addressed here.

Content Delivery Teams

A Content Delivery Team (CTD) is made up of 1 or more people who assume the responsibility for the management of a set of web pages. CTDs can include Content Administrators and CMS Editor(s), among other roles. Below are details on these roles and their responsibilities.

Content Administrators (CA): Max 2 per page/site

Required

May own one or more website areas (sites or pages) and is accountable for all aspects of web content management for their respective sites, including:  

  • Ensure appropriate implementation of the content strategy 
  • Create measurement and maintenance plans to determine the effectiveness of sites/pages 
  • Determine content delivery team and maintain up-to-date 
  • Determine and approve publishing or removal of content 
  • Engage with and obtain buy-in/consensus from stakeholders and SMEs, when necessary 
  • Funnel-approved content edits through the corresponding CMS Editors 
  • Review and make decisions about stale content 
  • Ensure deliverables are tested (either by their team or more formal approach), accurate, and meet any required guidelines (legal, accreditation, college policies & procedures, among others.)
  • Review reports and suggest content fixes for continuous improvement 

CURRENT CONTENT ADMIN LIST

CMS Editors

The CA is responsible for assigning CMS editing responsibilities to either Web Services OR someone from CA’s team. CMS Editors are granted permission to work on a specific area(s) of the website and are responsible for building web pages that adhere to current design system style guidelines. They must ensure content is optimized, on-brand, and accessible. CMS Editors can hold one of the following permissions as designated by the CA: 

  • Approvers can edit, submit new versions, approve/send back contributor edits, AND publish content directly to production. 
  • Contributors can only edit pages and preview in draft BUT must go through an approval workflow to commit changes to a new version. 

Other Roles

The following are examples of others that can be included as part of your CDT but are not required. Determining needs and fulfillment for these roles is at the discretion of the CA.   

  • Content Strategist: Defines the content required to meet user needs and business goals. Creates actionable plans from the initial idea and works with the delivery team to structure content using existing templates to fit unique needs. 
  • Stakeholder: Should be informed at the discretion of the Content Administrator when a deliverable is completed but may not make changes or stall the approval process. 
  • Subject Matter Expert (SME): Consulted with and assists the content delivery team in ensuring content is accurate, accessible, compliant, and meets business goals. 
  • Web Content Writer: Works with SMEs and Content Administrators to craft copy written for the website that is end-user focused, accessible, optimized, and follows approved style guidelines. 

Support Services

Marketing

The Marketing department is responsible for user interface elements of the design system, including: 

  • Oversee branding and overall look/feel 
  • Ownership of site templates 
  • Oversee non-technical aspects of search engine optimization (keyword research, search engine rankings, meta titles/descriptions, internal search)
  • Create editorial/copy editing standards
  • Assist Content Administrators with content delivery strategy and methods (writing, editing, asset curating, content accessibility) – these services are limited and on a per-project basis.
  • Assist with design system implementation

Web Services

The Web Services team, part of Information Technology, serves as the CMS administrator and is responsible for the following: 

  • Collaborate with content and design teams to build code, scripts, styles, and integrations to solve content needs that adhere to web standards and accessibility guidelines.  
  • Ensure site/features are available (liaison with web hosting partner), searchable (deploys and maintains sitemaps and other crawling rules), and measurable (deploys analytics reports as requested to support site-specific measurement plans).  
  • Responsible for CMS system administration, workflow management, and deploying system features leveraging the design system to support content strategy.  
  • Develop and conduct CMS training alongside available CTEL technologies.  
  • Mitigate technical risk by informing and engaging other Information Technology teams as needed (enterprise architecture, quality assurance, cybersecurity, networking, etc.).  
  • Serve as CMS Editors per CA request.

SAMPLE PROCESSES

  • Routine edits: handled by the corresponding Content Delivery Team. Samples of routine edits include content edits within an existing page or creating a new page(s) under an existing site. Route edits should be funneled through to an approved CA.  
  • Continuous Improvement: important because it is the best way to ensure that we do things the most efficient, effective, and productive way. Continuous improvement is the responsibility of each Content Delivery Team.  
  • Individual content delivery process: Each content delivery team is free to develop its own unique process for maintaining its pages. The sample workflow below can be used to craft individual processes. 
  • New site/feature requests: are at the discretion of each CA. The CA is encouraged to carefully review this self-help guide on when and how to develop a new site.

Define strategy

Define website strategy

Determine WHO you are creating this website for and WHY

Ask yourself…

  • who is your primary target audience?
  • what are they supposed to accomplish when they reach your site?
  • what pain point will your site address?
  • how will you measure success?

Pro tip: narrow down Key Performance Indicators to the most relevant and useful. Make an effort to track these on a set frequency.

Conduct audit

Perform an audit on current content experience

Determine WHAT content is available. 

Ask yourself… 

  • how is the problem being addressed today? 
  • what is available and where?  
  • what is missing and who will develop?  
  • what are competitors doing?  
  • are there legal/accreditation requirements that must be met?  

Pro tip: Be mindful that we have a variety of applications that audiences leverage. Determine how these systems are intended to support your strategy.  

Organize content

Determine architecture, navigation, and user flow for the new site

Determine WHERE and HOW the content will be presented. 

Ask yourself… 

  • where will the new site live and how does it relate to current resources?  
  • how is the end-user expected to reach the site?  
  • what steps are they expected to take to accomplish their goals/solve their problems?  

Pro tip: Try to map out the site based on flow and layout, ignoring any design elements.  

Determine page layout

Select page templates and develop content

  • Layout all copies in a Word document using only simple styling. 

  • Review available templates and determine which one suits your needs. 

  • Enhance your template with available web components  

  • Retrofit all copies to template 

  • Gather any required images and or/video assets 

  • Use this content guide to help build your page

Build and go live

Build the site

  • Test: If you have the bandwidth to obtain end-user feedback before go-live, that would great!  
  • Go live: redirect old pages, activate all marketing and communication plans 

Submit a Help Desk request for the build.

Maintain content

Optimize and maintain

Track KPIs to ensure the site is meeting your goals. Monitor your website and review all content ahead of key dates. Assign a backup admin to serve as the liaison and have them submit content edits well ahead of any deadlines.

Sample Events

The following are events (in-person or virtual, asynchronous, or synchronous) that must occur to ensure appropriate website maintenance. 

Content audits: The CMS and third-party tools provide analytics, accessibility, broken link, and stale content reports that Content Administrators can check as needed. Web Services runs broken link reports and accessibility reports on a weekly basis. 

Content Delivery Team meetings: Are held at the discretion of the full delivery team and may be aided by technology. 

Training: Can include CMS training offered (via MyLearning). Content Delivery Team courses (including end-user experience training, writing for the web, and accessibility), can be accessed via LinkedIN Learning and are at the discretion of the Content Administrator.

Sample Artifacts

Content delivery guides: A document and/or templates to be published to the website hub. 

Governance plan: A document published to the website design system hub. 

Hub: A website where all resources and processes are published. A Hub includes a design system, samples of all available blocks, features, and templates. 

Owner matrix/Content Admin List: Names delivery team members for each website area. Managed through a Smartsheet and published to the website hub. 

Web Request form: A Help Desk form to collect detailed requests from approved CAs. 

Style guides: Part of the design system, published to the website hub. 

Training guides: Deployed through MyLearning when possible.

Definitions

  • Analytics:  the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data. Critical to developing relevant and effective web analysis is creating objectives and calls-to-action that support the College’s strategic plan goals and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success or failures for those objectives and calls-to-action. The Broward College website offers a number of tools to monitor analytics, including but not limited to enterprise Google Analytics, Siteimprove, and Cascade Server. These tools may provide reports on data such as site usage, stale content, webpage traffic and engagement, heat maps, and broken links. Additional third-party tools may be leveraged for feature-specific data, as required. 
  • Content Management System (CMS): an application that supports the creation, editing, and publishing of content on a website. The College’s current CMS is Hannon Hill Cascade Server. 
  • Content Strategy:  focuses on the planning, creation, delivery, and governance of content. The Content Strategy—ensuring the website contains useful and usable content that is well-structured and easily found—is vital to improving the user experience of a website. The Broward College public website content strategy is the overarching website-wide strategy which encompasses content style and tone, audience definitions, and editorial guidelines and definitions; taxonomy; Content Administrator-owned stale content maintenance guidelines; general website-wide content (i.e., non-owned home page blurbs, or homepage “featured event(s)”); SEO; and internal website search strategy and implementation. 
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the process of making web pages easier for search engine indexing software, known as “crawlers,” to find, scan, and index the College’s website. 
  • Website taxonomy: refers both to the hierarchical structure (information architecture) into which content is authored, as well as the metadata elements and vocabularies created for tagging content. How pages are structured into content silos plays a critical role in the website’s architecture; grouping related pages into organized sites build a much better foundation for the website and creates a scalable model for future content. Metadata tags are used to identify content items for re-use across the entire website, assisting with search optimization. 
  • User experience (UX): is how a person feels when interacting with a system. The public website’s success hinges on how users perceive it: “Does this website give me value? Is it easy to use? Is it pleasant to use?” These questions must be considered when creating content or maintaining the website. 
  • Website: a presentation of information or informational user experiences. The purpose of the College’s website is to provide valuable experiences to site users (findable, accessible, accurate, and sharable content). To deliver on this promise, the website encompasses graphic and interface design, user experience, search engine optimization, content strategy, information architecture, front and back end development, infrastructure, system architecture, and quality assurance/testing. 
  • Web governance: includes all workflows, policies, and procedures for maintaining and managing an online presence in an organized way. 
  • Web maintenance: is the continuous, cross-functional process of collecting feedback on informational user experiences, assessing its value against the organization’s goals, and performing all the tasks necessary to enhance and bring value to the overall user experience.