COVID-19 | Website
Act quickly, deliver timely content. The Institute had been communicating news using a single breaking news page on the website, accessible via an alert bar on the home page. My colleague suggested that we create a website, seeing as the pandemic situation looked to be a medium-long term crisis. We ended up creating a site architecture, seeking approval and populating content, building and launching within 5 days from the first discussion through to launch.
My role was to propose the site IA, present it as a site map, co-create the content strategy and then to build the actual site in WordPress. The goal was to create a more permanent reference for students, staff and the public to find out how the developing pandemic affected BCIT and to be an ongoing information source for updates. It needed to be a site that could be quickly and simply built, easy for the communications team to update, and clear to navigate. There were two major audiences to address – students and staff – and I used these as a starting point.
| My Role | Who Else Was Involved | Tools & Methods Used |
| Site map & IA Content strategy Build | Project Manager/Content Strategist Marketing Senior Management Front-End Dev | Site Mapping WordPress site build |
PROBLEM
The main source of news was the Breaking News page, was filling up with a long list of information and FAQ on one long page. This posed a second risk – what if another urgent situation cropped up — a fire on campus, or flood, or other situation requiring urgent, high-profile communications that needed to be quickly shared? Were we prepared for communicating about two crises at once? Thirdly, the effects of the pandemic looked like it would be sticking around for a while. Campus was already partially shut down and no end date was in sight. How could we provide a longer-term home for communicating updates to key audiences?
ROUTE FROM THE HOME PAGE
How did we expect people to find a covid-19 site? The current solution was an unlisted page, bcit.ca/breakingnews — a permanent, super-easy-to-update page for announcing any time-critical information to a large audience.
