Challenges & solutions for a community website

In addition to the usual strategic and creative challenges of creating any website, building one by a committee of volunteers for a whole community—of many opinions!—adds some additional layers of complexity. Here is the solution we came up with for the new Deutschtown community website.

My personal assessment is that it turned out very well considering the volunteer-driven, multiple personality process.  I’d still like to see a few “missing teeth” filled in. And I’d like to see a more consistent writing style throughout—the inconsistency is a result of a variety of contributors from the committee. Maybe a stronger social media strategy going forward.  Etc.  Nevertheless, the site does a pretty good job of branding the community and demonstrating the benefits of living, working or playing here.

Architecture, Values, and Tone

Starting with a clear picture of the site structure helped a lot, a structure I developed as one of the volunteers.  We stayed pretty close to this throughout the process. We also developed some philosophical guidelines to guide the process and site’s community values. (view PDF of the architecture)

Philosophically we all more or less agreed that the language should be warm and friendly to invite people in.  That’s how I tried to write my sections.  But not every one was able to capture that tone.  For others considering the multiple writer approach, I’d recommend one experienced writer to polish the various sections for tone and consistency.

Eye Candy

I felt strongly that the site should be rich with visuals.  We have several talented amateur photographers in the neighborhood who provided hundreds of excellent images to our web developer, Cindy Cassell. I provided more than 200 images myself and strongly advocated for images featuring people.  Some sites of this type show empty streets or sidewalks, almost post apocalyptic.  Not very inviting.

Walkability discovered along the way

One thing that we discovered mid-process was the powerful marketing concept of the “walkability” of our community—meaning within the community and to great nearby attractions. How best to represent that?  To me a visual was the best answer, so I created a map demonstrating this key selling point.  Now, I’m not a designer and we didn’t have the funding to convert it to Flash or even html, so it’s there on a PDF.  But it conveys the message fairly well any way.  (click this link, then the “Walkability” link in the right hand column)

Ambassadors

A final and, I think, excellent strategic decision was to include a listing of and contact info for what we’d call “ambassadors” on the Contact Us page. The whole idea, again, was to make the site as friendly as possible, this time in a very real social networking sense, not just social media.  i.e. “We want to talk to you.”  As a result, today I got a call from a reporter at the Tribune Review who wanted to do a story about a new restaurant opening in the neighborhood, Serendipity. But it could just as well from someone interested in moving into Deutsctown.

In any case, we now have a very good site that paints a fine portrait of our community. And Cindy Cassell’s design nicely supports the “warm” community picture we were trying to paint.  Perpaps the insights and strategies here will be valuable to other communities undertaking the job of portraying and marketing their community on the web.