Your website is a vital cog in your project’s dissemination strategy, a central hub for all your communication, a repository for your research outputs and a shop window of information for your end users and potential customers.
Not only does this hub provide a valuable insight into your work, but it can also help you develop a targeted and engaged audience with whom you can forge ongoing relationships to maximise the impact your work has, whether that is through commercial exploitation or the development of collaborative opportunities for further research.
Despite this power to unleash the potential for good communication and networking, your project website doesn’t have to be a complicated to deliver what you need. A good project website is often a simple one – attractive, accessible design, clear navigation and content that comprises both institutional and promotional material about the project.
Tell your project story
The site should clearly set out the context in which your work is taking place, the aims and objectives of that work and the ongoing activities taking place to meet those objectives.
The site should also contain relevant news and event information along with key public results. It is a valuable repository for published material that emerges from your work – papers, public deliverables, posters, leaflets, brochures, films, talks and anything else you produce that you want to make publicly available to help tell your project story.
As a valuable networking tool, your website should also link to other relevant projects to ensure it is seen in context with specific European or national objectives relating to its research focus and other initiatives to which it is linked. In this regard, the website will also offer links to its social media channels to help spread its influence and message.
There are, of course, many other creative online options available for you to apply to your project website to help make it stand out and aid navigation. These include animated images and actions as well as interactive elements to promote user engagement. Just be careful not to overplay these and detract from the main aim of providing usable information about your work that is easy to find and understand and which, ultimately, encourages engagement with your target audience.
Focus on results
One more key aspect of project websites you should consider is the need to be flexible. Be ready to add results as they become available, publish stories about your work as it takes place and push all your content out to a wider world through social media. Be responsive to relevant events and piggy-back on what’s hot on the news agenda to help gain you the traction you need to get noticed by the right people.
A vital part of this work is to make sure you pivot your site at the end of the project, when all the work is done, and you have (hopefully) met all your objectives and achieved your aims. Now is the time to focus on results, providing your audience with a whole new view of the project and its outcomes. Keep what you set out to achieve and why you did it – bit now provide a new vision of the project – access to how you delivered, your results and, most importantly, what benefits these outcomes deliver and how your target user can benefit too.
- Insight Media has worked with hundreds of EU and nationally funded projects over many years, providing expert dissemination, communication and exploitation strategies. Part of this work is to design, develop and manage project websites, so if you want to leverage our expertise to provide your project with an effective, beautiful and responsive website that enhances your impact, then get in touch with Sam Davis at sam@insightm.co.uk