Transition Towns Web Project

This is a pretty ‘workflow-y’ post to provide the basics of the three ‘adoption’ phases we envisage following the launch of the website. It’s quite long as there is a lot to say! Getting a website online is one thing; having people use it is another.

The community nature of the Transition Network web platform means that it will only ’succeed’ (beyond being a news site) if the movement adopt it as their own. So it’s a gamble that there is enough value in the service to encourage transitioners to use it.

This is an old, old, online community management challenge, and one we are really looking forward to experiencing; everyone says that they want a community site – the question is – once we’ve launched it, and call out to transitioners to adopt it, will we all make the effort to make it a valuable community asset by adding our details?

We have identified three key phases to gradually introduce transitioners to the new and lovely site. The phases start with the vital but relatively simple bit where we update our initiative profile pages, and gradually get more interesting…

We are relatively easy about timings; we won’t move from one phase to another until we are happy that it’s OK; it’s a community project, not a corporate marketing gig. And please excuse the word ‘user’; it’s a useful technical term and, really, reflects that we are all ‘using’ the service.

Three ‘phases’:

• Pre-launch communications (phase 0)
• Pre-launch warm up mail to all official points of contact
• Initiative and User Profile adoption (phase 1: February)
• Post-launch welcome email to official points of contact
• Post-launch welcome email to all registered users
• Mullers adding themselves to directory (phase 2: late February/early March all things going well)
• Welcome email to all mullers (scraped off the google maps)
• Community Microsites (phase 3: late March, early April all things going well)
• Gentle approach to beta-testers from EM’s list of likely people
• Beta-testing activity
• Wider opening up to all wiki users

Initiative directory adoption:

From launch, all official initiatives will appear in the Initiative Directory with only initiative name and weblink (to either their site or the wiki page). All official points of contact for initiatives need to be gently nagged onsite to update their initiative profile page (more below). From launch the initiative map will look empty. We need to have a message saying ‘This map will get better as the initiatives add their locations to their initiative profile pages. If yours is not here, please get in touch with your core team and ask your ‘official point of contact’ to update the information’
If official point of contact has not updated Initiative Profile:

1. user clicks on initiative name link in Initiative Directory
2. user sees page with just the name and link and ‘This initiative has not yet updated their Initiative Profile Page. If it is yours, please get in touch with your core team and ask your ‘official point of contact’ to update the information’

If official point of contact has updated Initiative Profile:

1. user clicks on initiative name link in Initiative Directory
2. user sees page with all the data that the official point of contact has added including the ‘contact this initiative’ button

People directory adoption:
from launch, all appear with names only (firstname lastname) in directory view
If user has not updated profile:

• reader clicks on name link in directory
• reader sees page with just their name on it and ‘this person has not updated…’
• reader does not see ‘contact this person’ button

If user has updated profile:

• reader clicks on name link in directory
• reader sees page with the information that the user wants to be displayed including the ‘contact this person’ button

General user adoption: subscribers from TN newsletter database

1. user receive welcome email from ed and ben and transition techs from mailchimp (EM to perform cunning .csv mailmerge integrating their one-time login link into each mail if possible)
2. user reads email – includes one off password change link, link to blog post outlining actions – actions outlined as per steps below
3. user clicks on link to change password and confirm subscription
4. user lands on personal profile page admin and change password and update other details
5. user saves personal profile page and is re-directed to the public personal profile page
6. personal profile page updated
7. user receives confirmation email from system with text and links about managing personal profile

Official point of contact user adoption: pre-loaded users and initiative profiles
This is for the official points of contact who have admin rights to their Initiative Profile Page and can edit it… as per user adoption above until step 5, when:

1. user saves personal profile page and is re-directed to their public personal profile page
2. user receives personal profile email confirmation with text and links about managing profile
3. user searches for and proceeds to Initiative Profile Page admin and update details (minimum: country, postcode/zip)
4. save initiative profile page and be re-directed to the initiative public profile page with a map
5. user receives confirmation email from system with text and links about managing initiative profile
6. user advises other core team members to register themselves or update their pre-loaded profile information to show that they are related to the intitiative
7. given 6, user associates core team members to initiative

IF initiative point of contact asks for someone else to be initiative profile admin person:

1. site admin asks for their postcode and adds it to the initiative profile anyway
2. official point of contact (profile author) can add another registered user to the profile if they want, or..
3. site admin asks point of contact for other users email and firstname lastname
4. site admin adds new user to system if not already on the system
5. site admin edits previous official point of contact user’s profile to remove admin access to initiative profile admin page
6. site admin edits new user’s profile to enable them admin access to the initiative profile admin page

Nagging users to fill out their initiative profile pages:

Onsite: this will be a gentle reminder whenever they login. Users will be presented with this message until they have added at least a postcode for the initiative. If the user asks for ‘initiative profile admin’ role to be changed to another user, this message needs to switch to the right user.

On email: we will send out an initial welcome email to all registered official points of contact asking them to:

• Do the edit
• Point us to another user (doesn’t have to be registered yet, we can do that)
• At the very least, reply with a good postcode for their initiative

Community microsites adoption:

Given the success of users adopting the initiative profiles in phase 1, and mullers adding themselves with sucess in phase 2, we’ll move to phase 3: setting up the microsites

Community microsite users are likely to fall into the following types:

1. Light users (a few pages on wiki site currently)
2. Heavy users (up to hundreds of pages on wiki site currently)

• EM approach individual beta testers to trial the service
• EM sets up Community Microsite functionality
• EM support beta testers with set up
• Gather findings and lessons learnt and tips
• Widen to broader community