Portal governance policy

The UOC portal (or its public website) is the University's public face. This is why it is key for it to engage its intended audiences and meet their needs.

The main aim of this page is to explain what exactly we mean by 'UOC portal', what its strategic objectives are, and who its main audiences are. The page also aims to share the portal's governance model, which is based on three pillars: monitoring committees, roles and responsibilities, and the processes and criteria for publishing web content.

According to its mission, the UOC's website is its main platform for building loyalty and communicating with external audiences worldwide, and it is a tool for disseminating our academic knowledge. It provides relevant content and an excellent user experience, representing the university's pioneering, accessible and transformative vision.

All the content offered by the university under the uoc.edu domain (web pages, micro-sites, blogs and general-interest journals) makes up the UOC's website.

The website plays a key and central role in the UOC's digital ecosystem of communication channels. In addition to the content management system (AEM) and the audiovisual resource manager (DAM), there are many other tools and platforms that contribute to the digital experience of all our audiences: analytics tools, customer relationship management (CRM), profiling and enrolment analysis, the intranet, blogs, social networks, digital journals, audiovisual platforms, etc.

Within this environment, the website plays a key and central role in explaining the UOC. In this context, it is important to exploit the synergies of this ecosystem from a global perspective, aligned with a narrative in which different objectives and perspectives are balanced.

The content of the website must respond to what our users need and must be presented in a way that is easy to understand and helps them to achieve the objectives of their interaction with the site.

The UOC's website has four main objectives:

1. To position the UOC as a pioneering university and a benchmark in both lifelong learning and key areas of research.

2. To ensure financial sustainability through the programmes and courses offered, as well as synergies with other parts of the institutional website.

3. To disseminate our academic knowledge: relevant content and an excellent user experience.

4. To build loyalty, communicate and generate interest among all our external audiences on a global scale, and to develop relationships with the community that promote additional benefits.

These objectives are based on the following strategic objectives:

• Positioning: the website is the main platform for showcasing the UOC and must guarantee an excellent user experience.
• Visibility, reach, dissemination: the website's SEO and SEM strategies give the UOC visibility and reach on a global scale. Blogs and digital journals disseminate the knowledge generated by the UOC.
• Enrolment generation and conversion: optimal marketing strategies focus on what candidates are seeking and streamline conversion to enrolment.
• Attracting talent: the content and experience of the website must be consistent with our mission, vision and way of working and help to attract talent.
• Loyalty and service: the website must encourage repeat visits by users among audiences such as alumni and partner companies.
• Regulatory compliance: quality indicators, transparency, the e-services portal, institutional reports, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), cookies, accessibility, etc. must be included and/or visible on the website.

The Website Strategic Monitoring Committee is the body to which the Executive Board delegates all strategic decisions regarding the website.

Responsibilities:

• To ensure the UOC's narrative is implemented on the website, including its mission and values.
• To ensure that the website meets the needs of our target audiences.
• To ensure the website's contribution to the sustainability of the UOC.
• To communicate priority objectives and strategic actions.
• To make decisions about risks (reputation, revenue and security).
• To establish strategic priorities if they are not aligned.
• To ensure the implementation of corporate governance on the website.
• To request, verify and monitor the allocation of resources for website projects.

The Website Strategic Monitoring Committee meets three times a year, with extraordinary sessions if necessary. It comprises the following members.

The UOC Portal Operating Monitoring Committee is the body to which the UOC Portal Strategic Monitoring Committee delegates the tasks of outlining, implementing and monitoring the portal's content plan and actions for improvement:

• Defining the plan for the portal's contents and continual improvement.
• Executing and monitoring the actions agreed in the portal plan.
• Defining and monitoring KPIs.
• Monitoring user feedback and behaviour (this applies to both current and potential users).
• Informing the UOC Portal Strategic Monitoring Committee of significant risks and providing it with proposals for new policies and protocols.
• Ensuring that the portal complies with the applicable laws and regulations (cookies, accessibility, etc.).
• Ensuring that all portal content upholds the UOC's brand and values.
• Coordinating portal-related decisions and communications within the UOC's internal community..

The operations squad or website work team is an interdepartmental multidisciplinary team that organizes and carries out day-to-day work on the website and its associated projects.

The main objective is to promote interdisciplinary cooperation, facilitate decision-making and optimize project execution.

Responsibilities:

In accordance with editorial policy and the criteria established by the committees:

• To organize and carry out day-to-day work.
• To coordinate and/or implement projects and/or improvements.

The website operations monitoring squad is made up of members of the Communication, Marketing and Technology departments, who hold a synchronous meeting every week and asynchronously manage the various challenges that arise.

This operations squad of professionals including website editors, designers, graphic managers, cover designers, specialists in SEO and website development), linked to projects and the strategic implementation of the website, is fully compatible with the key governance roles for each section of the website: information owner, content owner and content editor.

We can distinguish three types of role (information owner, content owner and content editor) as a fundamental part of the website's collaborative governance. The aim is to ensure that, for the content of each section of the website, the people in charge are clearly identified, with a clear, efficient attribution of responsibilities, an essential requirement for the content published to be relevant, of good quality and up to date.

Information owner

• This is the expert responsible for providing the main messages and content of a specific section of the website from a strategic perspective.
• This person is ultimately responsible for providing information and updating it.
• They are responsible for what is included, not how it is presented.
• They are a key agent in the definition of the project brief.

Content owner

• This person is responsible for updating the content of a specific section of the website and maintaining its quality over time.
• They make specific changes to the website following the existing templates.
• They are often the intermediary between the information owner and the content editor.

Content editor

• This person is an expert in transferring content optimally to the format of the website.
• They provide templates for the sections of the website.
• They have extensive knowledge of CMSs and follow best UX and SEO practices.
• The carry out their work with the support of specialists (SEO, UX, analytics, etc.)
• They are responsible for strategic sections of the website, working in agreement with the Website Operating Monitoring Committee.

It is advisable for the information owner and content owner to be different people. Content editors are part of the Portal Website and Course Offering Website teams.

The website's management model is based on three areas:

Run

Day-to-day maintenance of the website. Linked to the operations squad.

• Requirements for updating existing sections are met.
• Small improvements are made and incidents resolved.
• The Technology department may be involved (for development or solving problems).
• No other suppliers participate and no extra budget is assigned.

Grow

Quick wins, development of the website. Linked to the Operating and Strategic Committees.

• These are small or medium-sized projects for improvement that require a web brief that demonstrates that it is a mature initiative.
• They may involve the participation of the Technology department (for development or project implementation). Other providers may participate and a specific budget may be needed.
• Projects are planned and prioritized based on the approval of the Website Operating Monitoring Committee.

Transform

Major projects. Vision, prioritization and roadmap.

• Large-scale projects with political or strategic impact that call for a strategic brief from the information owner or another sponsor. The website team will provide support in the conceptualization and implementation of ideas.
• This work usually involves the participation of the Technology department (project) and other suppliers, and requires large budgets.
• It involves major changes.

The process covers all the stages from the moment the need arises to its implementation. Throughout the process, it is very important for the web team to support the information owner as a key agent in defining what is needed (brief). It consists of four key moments:

1. Contact with the website team
2. Classification by the website team of what is needed
3. Planning by the website team of the implementation of what is needed
4. Development of the improvement by the teams involved

These principles answer the question "What should a website have to be published?". They include the following aspects:

1. Objectives: a website must have a purpose that connects it with its audience.
2. Audience: it is necessary to know the audience and their needs in order to relate them to our value proposition.
3. Context: Consideration must be given to benchmark websites and KPIs; user behaviour determines whether a website solution is optimal.
4. User-centred: taking the needs of users into account is key to increasing their satisfaction on the website.
5. Durability: the content must be sustainable over time. The latest developments will be covered by the news, agenda items and social media.
6. Accessibility: accessibility benefits the website, making it lighter and more adaptable to different devices and browsers.
7. SEO: to be visible on Google, you need inbound links and must consider user queries and the purpose of their searches.
8. Mobile first: content designed to be viewed on a mobile device generates a better user experience.
9. Non-dispersion: it is better to have a few, strategic well-designed URLs than to disperse messages too much. Dispersion carries a high risk of cannibalization in Google ranking.
10. Sustainable maintenance: each section published must be governable, measurable and easy to maintain.

This model provides for the analysis of SEO and website issues, related to our website and those of other agents in the sector, which can serve as a starting point for any initiative to improve the website. This analysis covers the following aspects:

1. Analysis of the competition or other reference sites
   1. Benchmarking
   2. Research into keywords used by the competition or other reference sites
2. Internal analysis
   1. Website analytics
   2. SEO
   3. User behaviour