Website Manager jobs in La Crosse, WI

Position: Drupal Website Developer

Duration: 1 year

Remote Work

Description of Project

The Minnesota Department of Information Technology Services (MNIT) partnering with the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE) is seeking a vendor to design wireframes and build a new public-facing website using Drupal for OHE. This project will include collaborating with State staff on a redesign concept and content strategy, new information architecture and wireframe development, development of the new website, and completion of usability testing of the new website prior to launch. OHE also requests a content management system (CMS) that will allow staff to manage the site after the launch.

This project will build upon current UX testing/pre-planning that is underway. That work is assessing the current OHE website to provide insights, research, and a plan that will inform the build of the new website based on user experience and key audience needs. The vendor performing the UX testing of the current website will provide knowledge transfer for the awarded vendor for this solicitation as work begins on this project.

The current OHE website has more than 800 HTML pages that are in the database and more than 5,000 PDF files. The website provides an authoritative source of public education information for a wide range of audiences, including public education professionals, private education professionals, policymakers, regulated entities, and the general public. The site receives more than 31,000 visits each month. Most OHE web visitors are looking for education, funding, loan information, student records, and scholarship information.

The current website challenges include outdated content, inconsistent and confusing navigation, difficulty viewing on mobile devices, limited use of photos and video, outdated design, and lack of a content management system.

This project will aim to improve usability and modernize the look and feel of the OHE website. It will result in a conceptual design for ohe.state.mn.us that is based on user experience and what key audiences want from the OHE website. This conceptual design must emphasize usability and accessibility, as the website is the primary communication vehicle for the department.

At a high level, the awarded vendor will design and create a public-facing website that is current, credible, accurate, strategic, designed to meet specific business objectives, written in plain language, easy to navigate (with consistent navigation across the site), visually appealing, always available, and is organized and displayed according to best practices and sustainability. Most importantly, it must meet user needs.

In addition, OHE may ask the awarded vendor to design additional websites in later Phases. Homepage, 2nd level page, and a subsite page for two additional OHE websites (SELF Loan and Get Ready) may be incorporated later with an amendment to the Work Order.

MNSITE 2.0 Request for a Deliverables Event

The following document contains the deliverables, project expectations, duties, and qualifications for this MNSITE 2.0 Event.

High Level Project Expectations

• Provide a standard scripted build and deployable solution and document as a readme file.
• Architecture design needs to be reviewed and approved by the MNIT OHE architecture group.
• Solution must meet MNIT security and accessibility standards.
• Utilize Agile practices with sprints, milestones, unit testing, and demos.
• Solution must pass MNIT/OHE end user acceptance testing.

Duties Related to the Completion of the Deliverables

The vendor will perform the following non-exhaustive list of duties as part of completing the deliverables:

• Participate in meetings with the MNIT technical team as needed to address any technical issues that arise.
• Work with the MNIT for OHE Project Manager to review and understand the business requirements and attend business requirements sessions as requested.
• Work with the State's project manager to estimate and communicate work effort and communicate any anticipated variances to the estimates that would impact the budget and schedule.
• Provide status updates on at least a weekly basis to the State's project manager and attend scheduled status meetings.
• Communicate variations from specifications to the State's project manager and MNIT technical lead.
• Provide code scripts for deployment by MNIT.
• Write code in adherence with standard architecture and functional requirements specifications.
• Create system support documents.
• Remediate issues that result from MNIT Accessibility and Security teams' scans.
• Complete code reviews and quickly remediate issues found in the reviews prior to deployment to test environment.
• Perform unit and integration testing.
• Ensure product in test environment is working prior to migration to production.
• Perform impact analyses for issues and changes.
• Perform demonstrations of system functionality.

Deliverables

Deliverable 1: Design and User Experience

Develop a conceptual design (wireframes) for ohe.state.mn.us that:

• Is based on user needs and web design best practices already in work with agency and will be provided by the UI/UX contractor.
• Includes responsive design layouts and page templates that meet OHE branding requirements.
• Adheres to OHE web standards and the State of Minnesota Accessibility standards.
• Covers all aspects in the current site but will be designed to scale for new and anticipated growth of information, services, and e-government functions.
• Encourages public engagement through social media or other approaches of interactivity with our audiences.
• Is visually appealing with a mix of text, photos, and graphics.
• Is compatible with current versions of major browsers and acceptably compatible with mobile devices and various desktop monitor sizes and resolutions.
• Develop three versions of mock-up wireframes for the OHE main website homepage.
• Develop three versions of mock-up wireframes for the following: second-level page, subsite homepage, internal content page and search results page.
• Develop a conceptual design for each level of site navigation.
  • Second-level page, subsite homepage, internal content page, and search results page.
• Conduct usability tests on conceptual design with representative user groups provided by State.
• Produce a website prototype.
• Develop a website design style guide which includes annotated and custom markup for accessibility
• Provide all production and design files (mockups) delivered as layered Photoshop files.
• Compile a list of optional/modular features such as calendaring and plug-ins (social media, etc.).

Deliverable 2: Project Administration

• The contractor will develop and maintain a project plan with work activities and will report weekly progress to OHE via an agreed-upon method. As needed, the contractor will update the plan as deemed appropriate by OHE, and OHE will approve all updates. The contractor will meet at least monthly with the OHE web manager, and with project management and communications staff as needed, to review current deliverables and provide project status updates. The contractor must also be available for periodic presentations/updates to OHE leadership. Audience research and engagement of OHE leadership will be at the discretion of OHE.
• Provide a detailed project plan and timeline with weekly reports to OHE.
• Provide documented rights of ownership of all deliverables to OHE.
• Work with the MNIT technical lead to provide an implementation plan.

Deliverable 3: Build and Deploy

The contractor shall propose a process for automating/easing content migration, e.g. scripts to export content from Cold Fusion and move to a new Drupal CMS. Process should support written text, photography, video, Power BI charts and graphs and SEO (page titles, meta descriptions, etc.)

• Design should follow State of Minnesota style guidelines.
• Assist with deploying any redirects.
• Develop wireframes that detail content structure for each webpage type.
• Develop conceptual designs to accommodate different styles of website pages for consideration by OHE (including two rounds of revisions for the selected design). Designs should include:
• Homepage
• Interior landing page (secondary)
• Internal content page (tertiary)
• There are pages with specific layout and functional needs to be determined, but are expected to include the following:

1. Newsroom landing page
2. News and/or feature story page
3. Data presentation page (incorporating Tableau reports)
4. Standardized grant and scholarship pages
5. Directory page
6. Events/training/calendar page
7. Newsletter display and sign-up
8. School licensure and registration
9. Consumer information
10. Investors financial reporting
11. Organized system for publishing legislative data reports
12. Various applications and forms

• Special Programs with specific page needs:

1. Minnesota Dream Act
2. Research, Data and Reports
3. Educational Attainment Goal
4. North Star Promise Scholarship Program
5. Publications
6. Minnesota P-20 Educational Partnership

• Native integration of APIs (e.g., social channels: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). OHE primarily uses YouTube for videos but also has access to Vimeo.
• Technical implementation and integration of design templates, modules, and components/widgets while including digital accessibility throughout all aspects of design and implementation.
• Design and implement a Content Management System (CMS)
• Provide assistance with and documentation of the development of editorial workflows, approval workflows, and site permissions.
• Static HTML and CSS files as well as templates (headers and footers) used for reskinning third party sites and services.
• Set up site search and search templates.

Deliverable 4: Information Architecture Document

Information Architecture focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way. The goal is to help users find information and complete tasks. To do this, the contractor will need to understand how the pieces fit together to create the larger picture, and how items relate to each other within the system. Contractor will create an Information Architecture document to identify how the site should be structured, what kind of content it should host, and how to accommodate future growth and change.

• Provide code and place in OHE Git Hub repository
• Provide IT documentation on architecture

Deliverable 5: Testing

• Perform UX testing on the website design(s).
• Perform at least three functional testing and quality assurance reviews to ensure that all aspects of the website comply with the wireframes and design standards.
• Testing will include a variety of browsers:

1. Chrome
2. Firefox
3. Edge
4. Safari

• Conduct two separate accessibility tests to ensure new designs across the entire OHE website comply with the State of Minnesota Accessibility Standards (including current 508 and WCAG A and AA compliance standards and requirements) and remediate issues found during testing.

Deliverable 6: Training

• Training Guides
  • Create a site management guide and CMS editor documentation, and conduct knowledge transfer training to designated OHE staff including migration assistance.
• CMS content editor guide documentation detailing:

1. The style guide
2. Content entry
3. Content items

• Virtual Training
  • Two days of live (virtual) training detailing:

1. Site structure
2. Security and permissions
3. Management and monitoring tools

• to 1 day live (virtual) training and knowledge transfer detailing:

1. CMS content editor training
2. Site maintenance training
3. Site build knowledge transfer

• All training should also include short videos organized into task-specific snippets.
• All training materials must be ADA compliant

Deliverable 7: Deployment

• Deploy the new OHE website to production and provide stabilization support.
• Launch website
• Post-launch support for two months:

1. Online tickets