Jennifer Cannon
New Media Strategist
UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Background

In late April, 1999, University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences' administration recognized the need to get information about the ongoing drought to Georgians. In short order, and with assistance from the Education, Communication and Technology unit's marketing strategists, they decided that a Web site would be an effective tool to disseminate, sort and store information to help Georgians understand and get through this ever-worsening drought.

At the time, ECT news editors had already been producing news articles about the drought and scientists had prepared information on coping with the drought, so content was ready to go into a site. In three days, a site structure was developed and the site premiered on May 4, 1999. Time for design and well-considered structure were simply not available; the site had to be ready for a pre-planned drought press conference. The result was a site that provided information mostly for county extension agents and personnel in other state agencies, who then used their media and personal contacts for distribution, and Georgia scientists and their peers, who used the empirical data.

The CAES drought information Web site http://www.griffin.peachnet.edu/caes/drought had become a clearinghouse of scientific and practical information about the drought and its effects on production agriculture, the rural economy in Georgia and even homeowners' landscapes. But users were fairly scarce; county extension agents and scientists' peers were our primary visitors. Consumers and homeowners apparently didn't want to hear/see how the drought was affecting the state's economy, rather they needed information to help them cope with the drought's effects in their lives. In addition, the vast majority simply didn't know about the depth of information available from the CAES on the Web. This was a huge potential audience who were more clearly and more deeply seeing the drought's effect in their lives.

On June 5, 2000, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division announced a mandatory outdoor watering/ water-use ban in 15 metro Atlanta counties. By June 19, statewide outdoor water use bans and restrictions were announced. These restrictions, mandatory for the households in more than 2,500 municipal water systems in Georgia and voluntary for the thousands of private well owners/users in the state, affected more than 2.5 million households.

Method

Through 1999 and into April 2000, the site's structure and design gradually changed as drought conditions in the state waned and then deepened. New information was added on an "as available" basis, rather than a regular schedule. Information from the state climatologist was written as conditions changed and ECT editors wrote articles that were seasonably desirable for media outlets.

By May 2000, a designer had been working on the site with the primary editor to unify the content as well as create a more pleasing look. We determined that the single factor that would make the site more marketable was a simpler URL.

In a meeting with the program leader for CAES Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Crop and Soil Sciences department head and an ECT marketing strategist, we laid out a marketing plan in late May 2000. The plan included strategy and tactics to reach homeowners, particularly urban homeowners with information about the drought and its effects on the entire state.

Plans included:

Redesigning the site: Restructuring the content to make navigation simpler for less sophisticated users and creating a new site title (Drought in Georgia) and logo that was more reflective of the entire drought situation and included the new (primary) URL. The old title (Drought `99 and `00) didn't accurately reflect the ongoing drought's intensity and length. The title design was more hard agriculture rather than reflecting the drought's impact on all facets of life for the entire population.

(Image of site main page)


Marketing the site to county extension agents in urban and suburban areas at regularly scheduled meetings. Marketing pieces included flyers and brief presentations about the site and its content.

More direct marketing to media outlets. Direct calls to editors and the inclusion of the new URL in news pieces made it easy for them to see the wealth of information available that t hey could give to their audiences.

Purchasing a new set of URLs to reflect the breadth of the site and to make it easier to market to users. We chose www.georgiadrought.com, .org and .net The .org and Net extensions more accurately reflect our institutional/education status, but too many users automatically use the .com extension to forego purchasing it as well. All three URL's redirect to the "true" URL on our Griffin server.

Compiling data into fewer graphics to make the information more easily accessible for media, scientists and other consumers.

By the June 5 metro Atlanta and June 19 statewide water use ban and restriction announcements from the Environmental Protection Division, the URLs were purchased from Network Solutions at a total cost of $144 and had been redirected to the old URL. The site had been redesigned to its current look, navigation had been streamlined to include constant links at the top of the page to the main page, the latest information, the glossary, the articles and links and contacts. The addition of a JavaScript-based "Water-use Tip of the Day" keeps the site fresh daily as well as provides useful information that users can see at a glance. Currently the tips are being updated for winter conditions and plants and household tips are also being added.

At the press conferences to announce these restrictions and at others with similar topics, the state climatologist a joint employee of the UGA College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and the EPD gave the new URL as a source for current and breaking information as well as a resource for historical data and archived articles to help Georgians deal with the ongoing drought.

Results

The new site title "Drought in Georgia" and the new URL(s), http://www.georgiadrought.com, .org and net were not only easier to market, but also reflected the ever-increasing amount of information the site contained from sources other than the CAES. We are cross linked and included information from the Georgia Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Division, Georgia Farm Bureau Federation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In June 2000, with coordination from the state climatologist, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources began sending their press materials to our site for release, as well as releasing it on their own site. In July, 2000, Drought in Georgia had active links from the CAES News Center, Access Atlanta (The Atlanta Journal Constitution on-line version), UGA Today, the Georgia EPD, Georgia Department of Agriculture, USDA, NOAA and many others. Many stories from ECT editors about the drought and/ or its effects that were published in newspapers and magazines referred readers to the site for additional information.

As county agents and media began to spread the new, shorter URL, we saw user sessions on our main page increase dramatically. In the abstract proposed for this paper, preliminary numbers indicated an estimated increase of user sessions of more than 900%. Later, more accurate data showed an actual increase of 275% from June 1999 to June 200 and 479% from July 1999 to July 2000.

(Table 1)

We also know anecdotally, that many of our users have pages within the site bookmarked and go straight to the specific information they want and bypass our main page.

In addition, we know that visitors that come to the site are staying there for the content. WebTrends software tells us how long users stay at our pages. For instance, we know 5,348 people came to our main page and stayed there an average of 1 min. 35 sec. Interestingly enough, the users spent most time at our page of FAQ about the watering bans and restrictions.

(Table 2)

Most Requested Pages on the Griffin Server http://www.griffin.peachnet.edu July, 2000

This data is continuously updated by WebTrends software in place on the server housing the Drought in Georgia site. As would be expected, our user numbers are down during the winter months. However, we still get an astonishing number of questions to our e-mail address drought@uga.edu, primarily asking about exceptions to the EPD watering restrictions or reporting on households defying the bans and restrictions. We also respond to many questions about historical drought data.

Conclusions

The "Drought in Georgia" Web site has been a success in making drought information and data available to homeowners, commercial agriculturists, scientists and media. Our efforts to adjust our target and market the site to a homeowner audience has been successful as demonstrated by the marked increase in user sessions after the premiere of the new URL and the initial efforts to market it through press conferences and media placements.

As drought conditions continue across the state, we plan to continue the maintenance of the site, updating data and releases as they become available. As new conditions warrant, media alerts and news items will contain basic information and the URL for additional information.

As with any project, we can look back and identify problems and parts that we would have done differently. For this site, we certainly would have allowed initial planning time at the beginning of the project, if it had been possible, rather than redesigning and remarketing it in mid-stream.

In addition, the Drought in Georgia site will be part of a site containing information to help our population prepare for and recover from any type of natural disaster.