Professionelle: New And Improved

By Galia BarHava-Monteith and Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes

9 February 2010

Our new and improved website, April 2010

If things have seemed quiet our way it hasn’t been for want of us pulling our weight behind the scenes on Professionelle! We’ve hinted at it in the past and now the time has come to let you know what we’ve been working on for the last 18 months or so. Be prepared very soon for our relaunch of Professionelle’s website. It’s taken us this long because we wanted to make sure we provided you with something you actually wanted and would benefit from, rather than simply something we thought looked cool. So we started in late 2008 by spending a lot of time talking to many of you, holding focus groups and floating ideas past members until we felt we had a good handle on things.

Design and develop

At the start of 2009 we faced the tricky job of trying to find the right developers and designers to work with. As our resident techno genius/geek, Sarah led most of this process with Galia providing moral support in the background. We should take a moment here to tell you that the current Professionelle site was only ever supposed to be a proto-type, and the reason it has survived for nearly three years is because Sarah quickly learned how to programme the back end to allow us to keep adding articles and changing things. Now, as you'll have noticed it’s creaking at the seams under the weight of 150+ articles.

As with most things with Professionelle, we’ve learned by doing. The process of finding the right designers and developers was quite an eye opener. In one memorable meeting, the business manager of a large and well-respected web design firm spent the entire time telling us how fabulous his company was, and how we should change our business model to spam you all with cheap promotions and general lowbrow material. Needless to say Sarah was speechless and if Galia’s ‘death’ looks could actually burn, the fire service would have been called in...

Fortunately, with the input of our initial fabulous designers and thought partners Lee Ter Wal we were able to select our new designer Phil Bannister and developer Chris Evans who have proven to be patient and relaxed in the face of two extremely quality and detail conscious professional women. They have guided us through the scary process of developing a real grown-up site while responding to our suggestions and queries in a very patient and professional manner. We’re not sure if they have ever had quite such finickety clients before - we go through every suggestion and design with a fine tooth comb. We console ourselves that at least we were the first clients to supply them with food and drink to celebrate their new offices!

So what can you expect?

We’re confident that we’ve come up with something you’ll love! Prepare to be excited and enthused by our new look for Professionelle site, and don’t worry about garish colours, pop-ups or any other craze invading your screen. The new site has more than a nod to our current look and feel, and we promise you’ll instantaneously feel at home. Those guinea-pig members who’ve seen the graphics have commented that it’s a "fresh-look Professionelle", and while they can tell it’s new they still recognise our trademark ambiance and colours. Take a look at the picture in this article to see for yourself.

Most importantly, prepare to be blown away by the functionality! The most frustrating thing we are told by our members is that it is currently very frustrating to search for old material. We sympathise - with over 150 articles spread over just 7 archives it’s a real headache. In the refreshed site, this problem should disappear, and you’ll be able to search our archives to your heart’s content.

Fresh each time

Every time you visit you’ll see new articles on the front page, because in the new regime our content will rotate with each visit. You’ll also be able to select the topics you are most interested in, and when you log in you’ll be notified of the most up-to date articles in your topics of interest. Our new site will also tell you which of our articles are the most read. Lastly, we have made making comments on material far easier. No longer will you have to fill in the form, or email us and then wait till Sarah has time behind the scenes to write the necessary code!

Multimedia

We are also working to offer you many more multi-media resources including web-casts and videos to make your Professionelle experience even more interesting. You can still print off articles to read in the bath (we know a fair number of you do that!) but you can also listen to interviews and discussions on your Walkman and Ipods.

We’ll also link to worthwhile articles and other online resources that we think you, our members, will appreciate, with the aim of being your one-stop-shop for all things professional women.

And we mustn’t forget the new improved shop-front. It will make your experience of booking for our events stress-free and will enable you to buy professional development materials that are relevant to your career needs and are based on the most up to date research and thinking. We will also be able to offer other companies and organisation the chance to advertise their events through us so you will have many more training, workshops, and networking events to choose from.

Networking

Ah, we hear you say, yes, what about networking? Have you abandoned your original mission in the midst of this relaunch?

No! Not only have we not abandoned it, we plan to express our passion for providing professional women with new networking opportunities that go well beyond what we are currently doing! Please checkout our second article for more details.

For now, we’ll sign off. Phil, our designer has just sent through another batch of page designs to approve...

Not long now!