You know that feeling of getting kicked in the balls ( if you have them) for that matter, I have no idea what the women equivalent is of that saying, anyway I’m going off track before even getting started. So I’ve arrived, and I immediately notice a world of difference in work ethics and culture. Now, mind you, there is no right or wrong when it comes to how you run your organisation, as long it works, and everyone is happy. As a matter of fact, I actually like the work ethics of the middle east. The rat race is not that present like it is in the west.
So when you arrive at the Cultural Society Center, you will notice a welcoming atmosphere. It feels more like you are at home rather than at an organisation which is a nice feeling on its own. A fresh start at 09:00 with breakfast with Kate, Hu and Onat. As I take a sip from my freshly poured Turkish tea by Hu, my eyes wander around the impressive bookshelf which Kate has in her office.
I tilt my head slightly to see what the titles are, and it takes me from ancient Turkey all the way to Aristotle and back to the byzantine empire. It might be a bit prejudiced, but that kind of put me at ease some bit about the level of knowledge this organisation houses. I mean, the whole point of the organisation is to find and maintain historic routes, so having it is run by people who know their stuff is kind of pivotal (but not so obvious when you look at what kind of people run companies sometimes). As we rest our backs to our chairs, we start talking about some of the challenges the organisation is facing.
No point in getting more visitors
What became clear right at the start was the huge backlog the system’s backlog has in terms of updates, security, backups, a system that simply don’t work anymore because of no maintenance. Now mind you, this was not because of some failure from their side but because they fell victim to their own success in a sense. Now let me explain that more in detail.
Whenever you start a business, charity, most people start because they have a passion for it and do not think about scaling. Even if they do, during the startup phase, you simply do not have the funds or the experience for it. So I was not surprised that they got so caught up in the daily tasks, which prevented them from focusing on other things like, you know….the backend of the very systems supposed to mediate and facilitate visitors online. One of these “facepalm” things was the missing contact details on the website, and another was, for example, the system which does the newsletters was outdated and did not work properly. But I think by far, the most frustrating part that got to me was that the organisation sent all these visitors of the website directly to agencies, but there was no way to monitor who was sent to who and when and where. Now I am personally a data-freak. I love data analysis to help me create strategies. Here we had a situation where a successful running organisation had no system in place to monitor the flow of visitors to external agencies and relied on an “honour system”. I mean we got a group of great people working hard to maintain these historic roads and there is no way to validate their efforts. I mean Kate, Hu and Onat are working really hard and it kind of breaks my heart seeing them taken advantage of like this.
So when during the meeting, the subject of “how to bring more people to the website” popped up, I asked..” and then what?”. What is the point of getting more visitors online or offline if there is no way to monitor or monetize(through donations) it. We need to fix the organisation’s backend before we can even think about a business strategy. You can’t build something great on a weak foundation.
Back to the drawing board
Alright, so let’s map out what are the core problems and let’s fix those first. We can see from the analytics and the data that many people visit the website and the office, which confirms my early analysis that these guys are just too busy. I can see with what passion Hu and Katy are running the place, and Onat is doing his utmost best with the website. Onat writes the blogs and helps maintain the paths, and he has been doing a great job in doing so. When I ask him if he knows who reads them and how many people, he nods “no”. I’m kind of disappointed for him because he is passionately writing about historical sites with no way of knowing who and how many people reads them.
After the meeting, we all agreed to fix the foundation of the back-end systems first before we proceed on to the branding strategy.
Short term to-do list:
- Fix the CSS layout of the website
- Sort out the newsletter email collection
- Develop a system to collect and divert reservation requests to agencies
- Develop a system which multiple users can operate and check
- Set in place a backup system
- Fortify the backend security
- Update and patch the system
- Redesign parts of the website to improve UX.
Long term to-do list:
- Develop a branding strategy for maximum impact with minimum effort
- Create a marketing playbook for anyone working on the marketing segment
- Optimize the SEO
- Multi-language website expanding to Russian
- Create a manual for social media
- Adjust the business strategy to hit targets.
- Content creation strategy
Ain’t nobody got time for that
So as I write this, I just realized, it will be a very tight deadline to fix all these problems, so I have to prioritize what I will be doing first and what parts I can teach via a manual or from a distance. I am certain they will be pleased by the time I’m finished, and sure as hell, I will be happy with the progress. Kate, Hu and Onat are doing such a wonderful job here, and I am happy to help out however I can to move their organisation forward and beyond.
So this time next week, I hope to fix most of these issues if I don’t run into additional challenges, that is! I might come back on my to-do list while dealing with a mental breakdown sorting this out.