KevinPfefferle.com

I promise to get back to the Yammer series, but maybe this post will help explain why there’s been a little break in them…

We’ve had two significant launches on the web this week at COSI!

The first one is our new “Share and Connect” page, where all of our social media involvement is summed up in one place.  I used a little scripting to add in some boxes that open and close to show/hide some of the badges or embedded content from each site (partly because it looks nifty and partly because the badges all look different and thus look bad when all jammed onto the same page).  Response has been very positive, including this nice mention on Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog:

COSI has done a lovely job aggregating all of their social media efforts into one “Share” tab on their website. Not only do they tell you where you can connect with them in Web 2.0-land, they explain what the different Web services do, which makes the invitation to connect less threatening for visitors who (like many of us) aren’t really sure what Twitter is.

The other new bit of web stuff is a site for our newest traveling exhibition, Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science.  The site was launched just hours before a joint press conference Thursday morning announced the Egypt in Columbus collaborative effort between the Columbus Museum of Art and COSI, with both featuring major Egypt exhibitions in 2009.  This joint project has already gotten some good local press and blog mentions.

More fun stuff coming soon!

After weeks of work, I was very excited to officially launch the NEW COSI.org home page today!

Here’s a little explanation of what we did and why:

From the time I was interviewing for this position, it has been noted that the old home page layout had some weaknesses.  Designed to not scroll, the page was very limited in what it could display.  The limited promotional space along with the use of “blurbs” that consisted of only a graphic with a headline severely constrained what we could display when visitors first arrived to our site.  There are many COSI programs and offerings that never made it to the home page due to either their limited audience scope or seasonal (internal) competition.  As a result, site visitors had not been exposed to the vast wealth of resources and programs available at COSI on our Home Page.

In addition, we wished to update the overall look of the web site.  We desired to communicate a feel that is less corporate and better reflects the look and feel of our print pieces.  We had been excited to see some of the new signage and literature that Peebles Creative Group had been creating lately, and chose to apply some of those visual cues to the web site as well.  I also wanted to make use of some newer web layout and image technology to make our site feel more contemporary and cutting-edge.

The result?  http://www.cosi.org/
(View in Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, or some other modern browser for full functionality.  It works in IE6, but not with all the bells and whistles.)

The new page has more of a “news site” feel.  We can now highlight our “lead story” and a couple of second-level stories with both photos and short descriptive texts before we link visitors to more information.  We still have a main graphic rotator (although this new one is JavaScript based, so it WILL display on non-Flash devices like the iPhone and Wii), and you can even cycle the rotating images manually by clicking on the arrow buttons.  Additional headlines down the page allow us to highlight more programs and offerings than we ever could before.  The “floating box” layout will allow us to add or remove content areas as needed.

We have provided our site visitors with COSI’s hours and rates right on the home page, as this is by far the most sought after information on our site (the general idea here is to make information that a user wants most as easy to find as possible).

The press room, event facility rental, and volunteer & employment links have transitioned from static (unchanging) boxes taking up significant home page real estate to a “utility navigation” in the upper right corner.  They will appear there throughout the ENTIRE site (rather than getting buried in a drop-down menu on other pages).  We can and will also highlight these areas when appropriate in other locations on the home page.

From an innovation and design perspective, you may notice the header, footer, and background remain fixed on the page and all other content scrolls “beneath” the header and footer (complete with drop shadows).  This not only looks cool, but also keeps our main navigation menu easily accessible no matter where you are on a given page.

There is much more I could share, but I’ll let you look over it and send me your thoughts and questions.

We will be working on transforming the rest of the site section by section to match this new look and feel over the course of the coming months!

Tuesday night, I attended the monthly meeting of the Columbus Social Media Cafe.  The CSMC is an informal gathering of individuals from all over Columbus (organization webmasters, local bloggers, others) who are interested in exploring social media as a method of promoting positive change in Columbus.

One of the interesting topics of dicussion this week was the recent O-H-I-O advertising campaign from The Ohio State University.  Ted Hatterner from OSU shared about how this whole campaign started with a picture that was sent from a US soldier overseas forming the O-H-I-O with local children.  The university has since invited people to submit their own O-H-I-O photographs, and in the process has captured images of all kinds of people all over the world joining in this familiar cheer.

This got me thinking… how can we at COSI better tap into the memories that thousands of families create here in our building?  We have established a YouTube channel, a Flickr Group, and a Facebook Page where you can interact with us and share your own experiences at COSI, and we’d love to have you share your experiences with us through those avenues!

As we seek to develop these ideas further, the community section of COSI.org will be molded into more of a “share” area, where we will make it as easy as possible to contribute your own photos and videos of the great experiences you have at COSI with us and each other.  We have even begun to promote this opportunity by reminding you as you exit the building to upload your photos and videos at www.cosi.org/share.

Are there other ways you’d like to be able to interact with us and share your experiences?  Leave a comment with your ideas, and we just might be able to make it happen!

After the Buckeyes losing, the Steelers winning, and half of a tree now laying in my front yard thanks to Hurricane Ike, I was pleasantly surprised to find this morning that we still do have power at COSI. That won’t keep the meat in my fridge at home from spoiling, but at least I can get a little work done this week (as it would be very difficult to do my job with no electricity).

One of our goals for COSI.org during COSI’s annual cleaning and maintenance shutdown is to rethink our home page. The existing design has worked well for COSI for the past few years, but it’s nature as a graphical “billboard” requires visitors to click past the home page before accessing any depth of information. The number of available rotating content areas (four) really limits the exposure we can offer to the hundreds of things that go on at COSI. The home page also currently does not make the most in-demand content on the site readily available (which happens to be our hours and rates).

We are trying to take these factors into account, as well as rethinking the overall “corporate look” of COSI.org. The home page will be a great place to rethink our web look, with the rest of the site following soon after. I am also experimenting with a way of organizing deeper content on the home page that will help to illustrate how COSI’s many offerings align and advance our strategic areas of focus: Technology & Innovation, Energy & Environment, Health & Medicine, Early Childhood, and Workforce Development.

What would you like to see when you first visit COSI.org? What are some of your favorite web site home pages, and what about them keeps you coming back again and again?