The Auroville website: a new way of communicating

On August 15th, the new Auroville website was launched. It was the result of almost two and a half years of work. Manoj, who leads the technical team, first became involved with the Auroville website in 1998. Manohar, the content manager, joined the team at the end of 2004.

Why was there a need for a new version?

Manohar: The new version was needed so that people could find what they wanted more easily. On the old website, there was such a wide spectrum of material that it was difficult to navigate.

Manoj: This is the fourth version. The third version was conceived in 1998-9 and at that time the Internet was very different; the approach to design, the language and the nature of the content was different. Our old website had become antique – for the new internet generation it looked like an old government site. It was also out of shape, like a big fat elephant.

However, it took us some time to get going on a new version as we knew it would be a huge work. We also had to find the right people and to get funding: it is expensive to develop a new website and we had no funds for development. Finally, Stichting de Zaaier funded us in two phases (it has cost around four lakh rupees so far).

Our first task was to understand what visitors to the Auroville website are looking for. We made a survey and discovered that visitors’ top priority was to understand the vision of Auroville. The second priority was to know how to participate in activities here and how to join Auroville.

So the basic structure of the new website on every page is tripartite: the vision, the actual reality on the ground, and how you can participate. The old way of thinking was that the site was a place for the dissemination of information. The new paradigm is engaging with the visitors, welcoming them and providing them with things they can do. This is a radical shift in the way we look at communication.

Does this imply a lot more work for the people managing the Auroville website?

Manohar: Yes. And sometimes it is difficult to answer people’s emails when they come with unusual questions. Just today there was an artist who wants to come and perform in Auroville, and I didn’t know who to refer him to. We don’t have a structure to receive these people.

Manoj: But that structure is emerging. SAVI looks after volunteering, Auroville Consultants offer retreats and sustainability workshops, the Auroville Campus Initiative will provide outreach education, Auroville Art Services is coordinating art activities, and all of these need visitors as participants. So our next work is to find ways of linking the visitors more effectively with these Auroville groups.

In terms of workload, we are looking at the possibility of streaming information from the different sites that exist already in Auroville, rather than publishing everything on the Auroville website. Then the Auroville website becomes a gateway for other content providers within Auroville to stream their specialised content through us, allowing our site to remain simpler and less bloated.

Has the nature of the content also changed on the new site?

Manohar: Yes, now we are emphasising a more visual approach using many more photos and video clips as these can communicate immediately. For example, after visiting the Matrimandir people often ask what more can they do. I am making a video of a walk they can take to Savitri Bhavan, Bharat Nivas and the Tibetan Pavilion to promote this possibility. I will make other videos on the schools, the environmental work etc. In fact, almost everything that was text on the old website can be shown through video.

Manoj: The first fundamental requirement regarding online content is to understand the psychology of the visitor. When you are reading a book or magazine you are concentrated on that and ready to devote time to it. When you are browsing, you may be doing five other things at the same time, and you are scanning, not really reading.

So the task for the designer of a website is akin to designing a billboard for a car that is travelling past at 100 km an hour and there are only a few seconds to attract the driver’s attention. In our earlier websites, the visual element was not so developed, and we were going for lengthy textual explanations. Now we have to be visually striking and be very crisp in our language to get people’s attention for those first key seconds.

Is there not a danger of oversimplifying Auroville by reducing it to visual or textual ‘bites’?

Manoj: We often equate quality with lengthy content but this need not be the case. You can communicate very deep things in seconds as images convey messages instantly. Conversely, if you have very lengthy material, it does not mean you are communicating quality.

As website designers, we must constantly remember that understanding the user is at the centre of our process. We have to get out of our personal preferences and listen deeply so that we can communicate in terms of their context.

Manohar: However, in terms of quality of information on the website, to make an analogy with food, I think you need “slow food” as well as “fast food”. So for those who want to explore deeper, we still have a large archive of material. I would like all this information to be available somewhere, even if it is only of interest to one visitor in a hundred. The challenge now is to integrate some of these pages from the old website into the new website and make the content very easy to follow.

Manoj: When we started this site fourteen years ago, archiving was important because nobody else was doing that at that time. Over time, the accumulation of archive material led to the old site cracking at the seams, and visitors getting lost. But then we developed Auronet, which is where the community’s life is documented and archived in real-time, and now we have over 100 other websites in Auroville, so we can refer visitors to them for archive material.

But we have kept some of the old archive. We had around 4000 pages, which included much duplication. We have reduced this about 3000 pages, out of which we have published around 500 on the new site.

Actually, 70% of the visitors are first time visitors and not looking for the archive function. The archive is only needed when people start engaging with Auroville on a deeper level.

How does a user get from the first ‘flash-card’ level to a deeper understanding of, say, a concept like Integral Yoga?

Manoj: At present we have two levels of information on the site. One is the first five second level, with the image and brief text. If you want to know more, you will get related links that will take you deeper. At present, about 30% of the people who contact the site are returning visitors, and many of these will need detailed information.

Manohar: On the introductory page on Integral Yoga you get links to Savitri Bhavan, Pitanga and workshops on the topic. You can also go to another level and explore more deeply by downloading the writings of Sri Aurobindo.

Manoj: Providing automatically-generated and contextually-meaningful links for a wide variety of users is one of the biggest challenges of designing software and it is something we will be continuously improving. Basically, the site is just a doorway which provides a visitor with access to a group or individual in their particular area of interest. Until we establish a person-to-person connection there is no real foundation for the next stage of somebody’s involvement with Auroville. So this is our primary aim. The website is only a channel for this.

How successful has the new website been so far in attracting visitors?

Manoj: The number of daily unique visitors has shot up since the new site has been in place. It used to be around 500 but now it is more than 900. In addition, the average time they spend on the site has increased by about 140% to about four minutes, and the number of pages they look at (3.68) has increased threefold. At the same time the ‘bounce’ rate has reduced to below 50%, which means engagement with the site is good now.

What do you need to work upon in the next one or two years?

Manohar: I will be very focussed on the visual side. This used to be a website where the webmaster put out all the content; it was a one-man show. Now it needs the involvement of many other people to provide information. It is now a collective endeavour where everybody must be responsible for what they feed into the system.

Manoj: This site is very much a work in progress; we need to continuously study the actual dynamics of the site, to understand who the users are, to see what they are looking at and how they respond, and then accordingly redesign the site. These people could be future Aurovilians, so we need to get to know them, their aspirations, their difficulties. Finding out about them and communicating to them what they may need to know about Auroville is the most fundamental shift we have to make as web designers.

What has been the most satisfying aspect of this work?

Manoj: There have been many things, but I would really like to thank programmer Shankar and his team, who are all young, self-taught, and who have shown an enormous capacity to learn new technologies and adapt. We started with one technology, and then halfway through we dropped it for another one. They managed to learn the new technology and then to implement it. One of them said this project helped him break through his limits and reach new levels. Shankar himself has decided to join Auroville. All this makes me very, very happy. Also I would like to thank Ajith, a freelance designer, for designing information architecture, Laurel for guiding us with her professional expertise in content creation, Mirao for the footer graphics, Jothi Charles for preparing quotes from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and Mauna for fundraising support as co-project holder.

Manohar: I think the Auroville web team is a great team. We have been together now for ten years and we have never had a problem. If we can realise the ideals of Auroville in our work place it is already a very important beginning. I am very grateful for this opportunity to be of service.