Milestone 1

Capstone Project Milestone 1 Report 

Spring Semester 2023 

February 19, 2023 

Project Name: Paddle for Victory 

Project Website: https://sites.google.com/view/paddleforvictory/home 

Class: IT4983 W01 

Sponsor: Paddle for the Cure NYC 

Professor: Donald Privitera 

Team Members: Rahim Siddiqi, Alvaro Jimenez-Kosan, Jesse Bancroft, Melina Castellon, and Seyedmahdi Salehkhoo 

Executive Summary 

In this semester-long project, we had the pleasure of working with a great organization called Paddle for the Cure NYC. This non-profit organization aims to provide support and events for breast cancer survivors and their families by offering a unique program that uses recreational dragon boat paddling to manage side effects of treatment for breast cancer survivors while also promoting a positive and healthy lifestyle for the local community. Our team was tasked to research, analyze, and implement strategies to help improve the Paddle for the Cure website and their digital platforms. We focused on five areas including social media exposure, search engine optimization, website design, website host, and newsletter features. The purpose was to generally boost traffic, increase engagement with current members, enhance visibility and accessibility, and increase overall efficiency and effectiveness of the current website. We feel that our research-based implementations and recommendations will help Paddle for the Cure NYC gain more target audience members and grow into a reputable community with the recognition that they deserve. Working on this capstone project helped us prepare for entering the professional industry by teaching us valuable lessons in time management, team collaboration, critical thinking, research strategies, presentation etiquette, and self-reflection.  

Table of Contents 

• ​​ Introduction...................................................3

• Objectives and Deliverables...........................4

• Website Design...............................................4

• SEO................................................................5

• Project Planning and Management................5

• Project Experience.........................................6

• Gantt Chart....................................................6

• References.....................................................7

• Appendix.......................................................8

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Introduction 

We are Kennesaw State University’s IT 4983’s Group 11, Team 1 researching how to improve the traffic and overall exposure to the Paddle for the Cure website. The team members are Rahim Siddiqi, Melina Castellon, Jesse Bancroft, Alvaro Jimenez-kosan, and Seyedmahdi Salehkhoo. The scope of this paper goes into detail of all the sections covered in the presentations, most notably, Website Design, SEO, Social Media Exposure, Newsletter, and WordPress Host. 

Some of the technical concepts utilized in this project include web development and analysis, html overview, content management systems, UX/UI design, and applied research. 

Objectives and Deliverables 

Our main objective is to cater to the sponsor. At the end of this project, we will have delivered the following: 

• Final Project Report 

• PowerPoint slides covering all our research 

• Recorded Presentations 

• Final Project Plan 

Website Design 

This section will largely deal with the homepage of the website. This is the most accessed portion of the website, so it needs to be the most presentable, organized, and set the tone for the rest of the visitor experience. Therefore, each page of the website should have consistent organization, similar style, and have the same font colors displayed.  

There seems to be a few clashing styles on the homepage. With different pinks, eyesore underlines, and content boxes varying in size. The most presentable part of this page is the, Why Choose Us? Section. It is clean, the font-size is large enough but does not overpower the page and is informative for the user. 

As the audience target is on the older side, sections need to be clearly defined and not have too many buttons seeking attention. The welcome slider has too many options which most visitors would ignore or would not pay much attention to them. Towards the end of the page, there is the sponsor section with very large logos. This clogs the page from a seamless transition to the social media section. On a mobile device, this especially fills the screen with an endless scroll. Older users also tend to have difficulty reading busy webpages. While they would appreciate large font, having large sizes and then smaller sizes distorts the view and makes it hard to digest all the information on the page. A few improvements to this page would improve the homepage’s presentation considerably and improve long-term user engagement and revisits. 

SEO 

The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to increase the quality and quantity of website traffic by making it easier for people to find your website through search engines like Google and Bing (Dean, 2022). Some key factors here are meaning, relevance, quality, usability, and context. To fit in with these factors, the content of the website covers most of them except the usability, which is more of a design element. The website should be easy to use and easy to navigate. If it is not properly organized and structured, then Google will not rank it highly in their search results. There are a few additional things related to SEO that the search engine prioritizes. Some of these things are consistent website updates, and then there are html tags and backlinking. 

The cornerstone of SEO is content. High quality content generation and regular updates to content is one of the metrics that increases SEO. An example of regular updates is using the welcome slider to showcase events past or current, which is currently being done to some extent. 

Another aid to content SEO is to include long-tail keywords. A long-tail keyword is a specific keyword phrase that contains three or more words, often containing descriptive words that narrow down the search intent (Weber, 2022). Some examples are breast cancer survivors, cancer support groups, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and overcoming challenges for cancer survivors. This has already been done in an effective way on the homepage already, with only a little improvement required for other pages on the PFC website. 

But an important aspect of getting that content recognized is to be known by Google as an authoritative site. The way the engine recognizes this is the number of high-quality links from other websites to your site – a backlink. Thus, it would be helpful to the website’s SEO, if sponsors and partners provided additional backlinks to the PFC website as well as seeing if local health organizations can also provide backlinks on their breast cancer support sections. 

The last recommendation for this section is that there should be a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on the website, either accessible from the navigation menu or the welcome slider. A FAQ page can answer popular questions from members and supporters and provide additional long-tail keywords in the answers to the SEO algorithm. 

Project Planning and Management 

In beginning this project, we created a plan that detailed our scope, communication methods, milestone scheduling, and how we were going to monitor our progress. For communication, we utilized both Microsoft Teams and GroupMe. Microsoft Teams was used to organize our weekly meetings and create our PowerPoints, research reports, and recorded presentations. GroupMe was utilized to stay updated on where we were at in our research when not in our weekly meeting and to notify of any project updates whether from ourselves or the instructor. 

The process to complete the project was to divide up the work into milestones, each focusing on different elements of our approach to the scope. In Milestone 1, we focused on SEO and Website Analysis. In Milestone 2, we will take on more subjects and discuss social media exposure, an overview of the analytic data provided by PFC, the newsletter, and finally the WordPress Host. To cap off the project, Milestone 3, will have a heavy focus on implementation of the recommendations discussed in each previous milestone. 

In each milestone, for efficient time management, we distributed different sections to each team member. Rahim was the team leader and researched Website Analysis. Alvaro and Melina researched SEO. Seyedmahdi researched Website Analysis. Jesse researched SEO, Website Analysis, and created and updated the project website and Gantt Chart. 

Work load summary: 

Milestone 1- 90 total man hours 

Project Experience 

As with any project, there are struggles ranging from time management, communication, and attendance to meetings. All of these issues manifested themselves throughout this semester. Some weeks required additional meetings to meet the deliverables required for the deadline and other issues were just breaking complex information into simple digestible material for the industry partner. 

Communication is a key aspect to every step of this project and in some cases, this faltered which resulted in not knowing the entirety of the submission required and not communicating with the instructors to get the necessary information in time. As a team we were able to overcome these hurdles and submit the necessary deliverables required to the organization. Some of the communications platforms we used were Microsoft Teams, GroupMe, Zoom, and email. 

What we learned: 

• Researching and analyzing data/information is vital to any project 

• Presentation skills, delivering complex information in an easy-to-understand way 

• Creating our own deadlines is important to stay disciplined and meet the required project deadlines 

Gantt Chart 

(See Gantt Chart page)

References 

Dean, Brian. “What Is Seo? Search Engine Optimization in Plain English.” Backlinko, 2 Nov. 2022, https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/what-is-seo.  

“How Does Search Engine Optimization Work?” International Trade Administration | Trade.gov, https://www.trade.gov/how-does-search-engine-optimization-work. 

Michigan Technological University. “Five Ways to Improve Your Site's Ranking (SEO).” Michigan Technological University, Michigan Technological University, 4 Oct. 2021, https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/websites/seo/.  

“Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.” Google, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide.  

Appendix 

a. Project Details

• Milestone Reports 

• Milestone PowerPoints 

• Milestone Presentations 

• Project Plan 

• Project Website 

• Research Report 

• Gantt Chart 

b. Project files list: explain each file/folder arranged in the “project files” sub-folder. 

- PFC Final Deliverables Folder 

c. Progress reports list: describe each file arranged in the “progress report files” sub-folder.