Can Your Website Keep Up with the Pandemic?
Especially in the midst of a pandemic, it’s more important than ever that an organization is able to communicate through several digital channels, especially their website.
The problem is, that while your “official” website is where most visitors will go in order to find your “official” communications, it’s often days or weeks behind your Facebook page.
The reason is simple, Facebook is designed to be operated by someone who has received no training. On the other hand, most website platforms require several hours of training for a clerk to even begin taking responsibility for maintaining a handful of pages. This training requirement usually results in someone from the IT department doing all of the updates based on receiving an email request. This can result in an average update cycle of a week or two.
The pandemic has created a situation where out of date information is not just inconvenient, it’s dangerous. People need to know what is open, what is closed and what the rules are today (not yesterday). This is especially true for a California County Office of Education website. Are the schools open? Are classes offered online? What districts are running half days? Tens of thousands of visitors per month will visit these websites to understand what’s going on, today. So how do you get your website to be as easy to update as Facebook?
The Placer County Office of Education has solved this problem. They have implemented a new website that anyone with the most rudimentary Microsoft Word skills can update with just a few minutes of training!
Yes, when in editing mode each page behaves just like a Microsoft word document. But, when you save your changes, it snaps back into a beautifully rendered, completely compliant page with sophisticated features. Additionally, each edit of the page is automatically saved as a “version” allowing you to roll back to a previous version if you ever need to.
Even better, the whole site works like this. You can edit pages, create announcements, news items, bulletins, and photos just as fast as if you were in Microsoft Word. And, when you save the page, the code behind-the-scenes insurers that your information looks beautiful and maintains the required standards for compliance, ADA and Mobile devices.
In these uncertain times it is refreshing to know that the PCOE site is one you can count on.