Website Redesign

More than 500 redesigned were submitted to eduStyle as redesigns last year.

That’s what discovered Stewart Foss, the driving force behind this web design gallery dedicated to higher ed websites, as he was working on his next webinar about higher ed redesign trends scheduled on February 16, 2010 (Registration is open until February 8, but if you sign up before February 2nd for the Web Redesign Boot Camp – you’ll get access to 4 extra webinars about web redesign at no extra cost).

eduStyle || Labs – Top Sites by Votes

With things changing so much – and fast -on the Web (social media, mobile Web, etc.), I’m wondering how many web redesign projects are under way or about to start in higher ed – and what the main reasons to redesign are in 2010.

If you work on a redesign (or are planning to), tell us why you redesign and when you plan to launch the new version of your website (even if it’s in several months) by posting a comment.

I’ve mentioned this series back in December, but it’s time for a reminder packaged with a great offer if you move quickly – as it will be available to a limited number of registered institutions.

Web Redesign Boot Camp is a 3-webinar series scheduled on February 16, 17 and 18.

It will provide you with some great insights, tips and lessons learned to help you (and your stakeholders) get ready for your next redesign.

Featuring Stewart Foss from eduStyle, Chas Grundy from Notre Dame and Ben Riseling from Duke University, this series will give you what you need to know before jumping into a redesign project:

Top trends in higher ed redesigned websites
Stewart Foss, Founder of EduStyle and co-author of The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design, will present the latest trends in higher ed web design identified among the best redesigned websites (homepage, departmental, admissions, etc.) in 2009.

How to survive a Website Redesign & a CMS Implementation
Ben Riseling, Manager of Web Operations for the Office of News & Communications at Duke University, will make sure your survive your next website redesign coupled with a CMS implementation. He will share the best tips and tricks he acquired during the 9-month process preceding the launch of the new duke.edu powered by the open source CMS, Drupal, in October 2009.

Recipe for Successful Web Redesigns
Chas Grundy, Director of Interactive Marketing for AgencyND – a marketing agency within the University of Notre Dame, will explain how his team manages website redesigns for different departments and offices as well as for the university homepage. He will share best practices and lessons learned as well as his own recipe for sucessful web redesigns and happy stakeholders.

Find out more about this series at www.higheredexperts.com/redesignbootcamp.

If you register for Web Redesign Boot Camp by February 2nd, 2010 (the registration deadline is February 8, 2010), you’ll get free access to Web Redesign Academy, a collection of 4 other recorded webinars about the topic, until May 31st, 2010.

The Web Redesign Academy suite includes the following webinars:

How to make the case and prepare your next redesign
(presented on February 20, 2008)
Seth Meranda, Assistant Director for Interactive Media at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will show you how to build your case with web stats, surveys and research for your next redesign. After this webinar, you will be better prepared to start to redesign, sell the project to your main stakeholders or even get the budget you need.

How to survive a website redesign
(presented on February 21, 2008)
Nancy Prater, Ball State University Web Coordinator will help you make sure your survive your next website redesign by sharing the best tips and tricks she acquired during the 18-month process preceding the launch of the new bsu.edu in late October 2007.

Website Redesign & CMS Implementation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(presented on April 22, 2009)
Tonya Price, Director, Marketing and Web Operations at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will share what went bad in WPI redesign coupled with a CMS implementation and how her team managed to overcome these challenges. She will also present her recipe to prepare, manage and survive any big website redesign project that will come your way.

Web Redesign on a dime in 10 steps
(presented on April 23, 2009)
Nick DeNardis, Associate Director of Web Communications at Wayne State University and Founder of the video blog EDU Checkup, will explain how his team managed to complete 25 successful website redesigns for different departments and offices. He will share best practices and lessons learned as well as his 10 steps plan to redesign a small website on a dime.

So, if you want to get 7 webinars for the price of 3, make sure you register for Web Redesign Boot Camp before February 2nd, 2010.

As I mentioned at the top of this blog post, this is a limited offer only available to a limited number of registered institutions.

You might have already read the excellent article including a short video interview about BU redesign on BU Today, but in case you haven’t heard yet: there’s a newly redesigned homepage in town.

Here are the Before and After screenshots of BU Homepage (you can also look at the really great timeline included in BU Today piece):

BEFORE

AFTER

Boston University

I asked a few questions to Scott Dasse, Creative Director for New Media at Boston University, about this project, so you can learn even more about what went on behind the scenes.

1) How long did the whole process took and how did you approach this redesign?

The design for the homepage itself was completed over a few weeks last Spring. We wanted to launch an evolution of our 2006 homepage that did a better job of bringing our best content — aggregated from more sources — to the surface. Another goal was to build tools to support a more rapid publishing cycle, so we developed a custom content management system to control an ever growing library of features. We also redesigned our search pages, which now mash up web, map, and directory results into a single results page.

Over the Summer we solicited feedback from the community which prompted some minor changes, most notably the inclusion of daily news headlines. We built the CMS, redesigned the search, and collected content beginning in late November. I consider this a beta launch since we’ll be rolling out new features, such as media archives, in the next few weeks.

2) Why did you decide to incorporate this mega navigation menu to the homepage design but not on the secondary pages?

I know we have a somewhat different approach to design consistency than other institutions. We view our homepage as a unique website and not a single page. The secondary pages, designed in 2006, were not part of this project, though we may incorporate the same navigation when we do address them.

3) Why did you choose to make such a big contrast between the color scheme on the homepage and the secondary pages?

Same answer as above, really. Though when the secondary pages were redesigned on 2006 and launched with the homepage, the colors were also different. There was consistency in the feel of both page designs due to other design elements (typefaces, spacing, logo placement, etc.). In terms of the differences, I suppose we find this contrast interesting and, in a way, reflective of university culture.

4) How comes BU logo isn’t used on the top right as it is often the case in higher education?

This one’s easy: it just doesn’t look good.

Dear readers, what do you think about this new design for BU? Tell us by posting a comment.

And, that’s just for January, February, March and April 2010.

I’ve tried to put a program that will help you do your job even better at a time where you are asked to do a lot more with a lot less (time, money, staff…)

As usual, places are limited, so it’s always wise to register ahead of time if you want to secure a spot for your team. You can register by visiting each of the dedicated web addresses of the series. And, if you have any questions, feel free to email karine@higheredexperts.com – always happy to help.

Start The (Word)Presses: How to create the online version of your print magazine or newsletter with WordPress
January 21st, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by January 11, 2010 January 19., 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/startwordpresses

Website Redesign Boot Camp: what you need to know before jumping into a redesign project
February 16, 17 & 18, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by February 8, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/redesignbootcamp

Analytics 360: How to track and measure (and show to your boss) the ROI of your marketing initiatives
March 10 & 11, 2010 1PM-2PM ET and an introductory session on-demand
Register by March 1st, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/analytics360

Open Source CMS Fair: Why Drupal, WordPress/MU or DotCMS could be your next Web Content Management System
April 13, 14 and 15, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by April 5, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/cmsfair

Wow, I haven’t blogged for the past 2 weeks…

Anyway, I just want to make a quick post to thank you all the 559 persons who took the Higher Ed Experts/eduStyle/Uwebd/Collegewebeditor.com Survey and let you know that the official list of the 14 winners of the prize drawing is now available on Higher Ed Experts’ new website.

Higher Ed Experts

You might have already seen it if you follow me on Twitter or read my email newsletter, but the new Higher Ed Experts’ website is what kept me from this blog, my Twitter account and sometimes even my email box for the past few weeks.

If you haven’t visited it yet, go check it out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment here or there.

After Bates College last month, Duke University unveiled its new homepage on October 1st.

The last design was done in 2006 and had definitely a Google-ish kind of look.

Duke Homepage (2006)

With the new design Duke’s homepage look and feel is less unique, but it is definitely more user- and content-friendly. Stories – told through text, photos and videos – are a big part of this new homepage (like for Bates).

Home | Duke University (2009)

What is also great about this new homepage is that it is running on the open source CMS, Drupal and was mostly developed internally. Ben Riseling from the Office of News and Communication, Samantha Earp from the Office of IT and Blyth Morrell of Duke Web Services oversaw the technical development and deployment of the new site.

You can read more about the redesign in the press release about the redesign launch or the blog set up to keep the community informed about this project.

Ben Riseling was kind enough to answer the few questions I had about the redesign.

1) How long did the whole process took and how did you approach this redesign?
The whole process, from strategy/planning to design to build and launch took 9 months. Duke’s new VP for Public Affairs, Michael Schoenfeld, and also new Director for Brand Strategy, Denise Haviland, set the initial goal that the new site should visually align itself with the branding standards set by our undergraduate admissions viewbooks. Mike also made very clear that we needed to deliver dynamic content, utilizing our many news and event feeds effectively while also showcasing our growing number of videos.

We knew we wanted to utilize internal resources more than in the past and, from the start, involved our central IT office in all levels of planning. Aside from that we followed the traditional route of gathering strategic needs of the university, creating functional requirements and then making design and technical decisions to meet our needs. Despite this being one of the most complex sites we’ve built everything went so smoothly.

2) Duke has already done a lot of work with WordPress, why did you choose Drupal over WP for this implementation?

The main reason we chose Drupal is that it met the functional requirements for the proposed site perfectly. Drupal is also used widely across Duke and supported by our central IT office. Creating editorially rich sub pages was a key deliverable for the new site and Drupal gives you the flexibility to build pages as distinct sites. We knew we wanted to port over our existing Arts and Research sites as new secondary pages for Duke.edu and wanted to leave the door open to expand other sub pages in the future.

Wordpress has proven to be a very flexible platform for many types of sites but we had experienced some challenges in how that tool handles everything as a distinct piece of content with a unique url.
Customizing with new plugins then created challenges of backwards compatibility when addressing critical security patches. We still use Wordpress and Wordpress MU for many sites at Duke but, again, Drupal met both the functional and technical needs for this new site and has proven to be very easy to use.

3) Some of the main navigation tabs directs to differently branded websites, don’t you think it might be confusing for a first-time visitor?

Can you or should you develop a unified visual brand across every unit of a higher ed institution? We pursued the alternative track of duplicating content and links to services on Duke-branded sub pages and this was a resource drain while also not meeting the need of the first-time visitors who really just wanted to find a doctor or clinic or purchase basketball tickets.

The majority of first-time web traffic comes directly from search engines and visitors are entering sites from the basement window vs. the front door, right? Our user testing with incoming freshman has certainly confirmed this trend at Duke. One approach we’ve developed is our expandable brand bar which can be easily added to a site and unobtrusively lend that extension of Duke’s brand. It is safe to say that this is an ongoing conversation at Duke.

Brand Bar | Duke University Spotlights |

Brand Bar – screenshot

Last week, I attended the rehearsal of Dave Olsen’s webinars on how to create a mobile website for your university in 24 hours or less.

And, I’m happy to report that he has really done a lot of work to make the implementation of MIT Mobile Web very easy through the integration of some Google services. In just a few edits, you can get a mobile website for your institution complete with a campus directory, news, campus map and a calendar of events.

It is really amazing and definitely worth the registration fee with the time you will save – by attending the webinar – implementing the open source package.

Since I’ve received a few requests to postpone the registration deadline of Dave’s webinar series, Going Mobile, I’ve decided to give you a few more days to register if you are interested.

Registration will close this Friday (October 16, 2009) at 9PM ET: www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile.

This 2-webinar series is composed of a live event and a pre-recorded session that can be watch on-demand.

Register for Going Mobile Webinars

Going Mobile: How to build a mobile website for your institution in 24 hours
October 21st 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: October 28, 2009)

Can you find your way in a page of HTML code, use Google services and follow basic steps?
Then, you can develop a mobile website for your institution compatible with smart and regular mobile phones in no time and on a dime.

David Olsen, Professional Technologist at West Virginia University, will explain why and how to build your institutional mobile website in 24 hours (or less) and… for free. He will demonstrate all the steps involved in using MIT Mobile, an open-source mobile web platform, and will share the shortcuts and code he developed to implement the calendar, map and news features for WVU Mobile Web.

Registered institutions include:

• Indiana State University
• The University of Iowa
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Upper Iowa University
• Susquehanna University
• Point Park University
• UTM
• Rowan University
• University of Delaware
• Southeast Missouri State University
• Angelo State University
• Washington State University
• UC Berkeley
• Lehigh University
• Emory University
• University of Tampa

For more info and to register, you can visit www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile

Have you seen Bates College’s new homepage?

You should check it out. It is really different and innovative.

Bates College

Not because it uses fancy graphics or animations, but because Jay Collier and his team at Bates College have decided to make this redesigned homepage more than just a collection of the usual navigation scheme, useful links and beautiful campus photos.

So, what makes it so different?

Among other things:

• The way stories – real stories about students, faculty and staff told through blog posts, photos and news in a section called Bates Views – are featured on this homepage.
• The navigation scheme
• The dynamic information architecture
• The use of photo galleries including shots with short captions telling the full story


Bates College

Really beautiful and thoughtful work, which is why I asked Jay Collier 3 questions about this project.

1) How long did it take from concept to the implementation of this first phase?

The Home 4 project took 8 months, from kickoff to final launch. It was built upon the listening sessions I convened with students, staff, faculty, alumni, and parents in 2007 and 2008, and a whole domain blueprint was released in September 2008.

Concurrent with this process, I recruited and hired our first new staff member, producer/designer Ethan Dahlin Magoon, who took on the interface design in April. After releasing several prototypes to the campus community, W3Markup did the base theme coding and Ethan expanded it to dozens of templates for the launch.

Integrating an overview of Bates with almost 1,000 categorized and tagged stories made my work developing the information architecture and writing and editing content more challenging. However, doing so was necessary to get across our primary organizing principle: that there is a common approach to learning at Bates which is experienced in countless ways, throughout a Bates lifetime. We are fortunate to have been able bring together content from news releases, the Alumni Magazine, the Viewbook, the monthly newsletter, student and parent handbooks, and other sources all in one place. I think that was a somewhat unusual opportunity.

2) What do you use for the CMS? The overlay pictures?

We have been managing the site in WordPress since the beginning, first as a proof-of-concept with student assistants at WordPress.com, then as a working prototype with WP 2.8 software on an external hosting service, and now hosted on a campus Web server. We’ve had over a dozen professional staff members and student assistants creating and editing content during that time, and now Ethan works concurrently in the system on interface updates.

We use a series of plugins to manage content and presentation. The slideshows are handled with NextGenGallery, with the overlays via Thickbox and jquery. We’re using a number of plugins to enable shortcodes for editors along with WP-Table Reloaded for organization of tabular data originating in DabbleDB. We had over 30,000 views on launch day — about double the load of an average day — all served by WP-SuperCache.

Supporting standard protocols like RSS means our stories — via hundreds of category and tag feeds — are available for almost any interest. By way of example, see how our NetVibes page at Explore Bates surfaces content from both Home 4 and collections curated in Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube. (We feature links to social services in every page footer.) I also integrated Google Maps, Zoomifyer, and Flash PanoToVR into the editorial. We also worked hard on validation and accessibility so that Home 4 will be welcoming to visitors with a variety of interface preferences. Of course, we have much more to do; we released Home 4 when the bulk of editorial work was done — but before all of the interface design and coding was complete. Version 4.1 is already underway.

3) In your presentation post, you’re hinting that you want to follow the iterative redesign philosophy for next phases. How do you plan – concretly – to do this?

Just as the master plan for an historical village envisions how people will relate and move through their environment as changes are made over a long period of time, so, too, can principles of an online experience define how we make future decisions that will support the effortless movement of our constituents through the online ecosystem.

In my domain blueprint, I recommended that online relationships with the College grow deeper along smooth pathways across systems and services, rather than leaping over walled gardens. Home 4 demonstrates both a point of entry as well as moving our constituents toward deeper engagement with the College in their areas of interest.

As to getting it done, the next phase in the blueprint is The Hub, where offices and departments share their official information about people, ideas, and events. I use the MIT discovery framework and ActivCollab to manage projects, and most of the planning documents, including user scenarios and feature requests (detail) are complete. We already collaborate with the people who manage subsites in our legacy content management system, and we know their hopes and challenges. Supporting the second-impressions they manage is the next logical step.

The future online ecosystem is not monolithic, but, more and more, will be made up of many interoperable services, on-campus and off. As long as we support basic principles of content exchange, we can integrate the online experience to support multiple pathways of deepening engagement.

If you’re a regular of this blog, you know that I try to be as flexible as possible with registration deadlines for Higher Ed Experts webinar series.

If I get a few requests to postpone the deadline a bit, I always try to accommodate people who want to sign up at the last minute. Well, I got a couple of those again last Thursday and decided to postpone the registration deadline of the upcoming Website Redesign Boot Camp Series (April 21, 22 and 23) for a week, until this Friday (April 17) at 9PM ET.

If you have a big or small website redesign in your future, you don’t want to miss this 3-webinar series presented by Stewart Foss from eduStyle, Tonya Pricer from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Nick DeNardis from Wayne State University and EDU Checkup.

The series was designed to give you a great jump start on the latest trends in web redesign, lessons learned on redesigns coupled with CMS implementation and DIY web redesign for smaller projects.

Need another incentive to register? Here we go:

Our speaker Stewart Foss (who is also one of the authors of the eduStyle book) has agreed to give away one of his $99 web page reviews to the lucky institution whose name will be drawn among all the webinar attendees at the end of the series.

This is a great opportunity to start your redesign project with an evaluation done by a knowledgeable outside expert.

Registered institutions to the Web Redesign Boot Camp Webinar Series include:

Union University
Duke University
SUNY Oswego
UNC Wilmington
Hope College
Upper Iowa University
Holyoke Community College
CSU Monterey Bay
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Johnson County Community College
Wayne State College
The New School
Riverside Community College
Edinboro University
Northwestern Health Sciences University
Suffolk University
Penn State Behrend
Richard Stockton College of NJ
The University of Texas at Austin
Eastern New Mexico University
University of Colorado at Boulder
The George Washington University

Registration is now open until April 17, 2009 but will close as soon as the limited remaining places are filled. So, it’s a good idea to register as soon as possible at www.higheredexperts.com/webredesign

And, if you have any questions, just email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com

My third UB column for 2009 is now available in the April issue as well as online: “Web Redesign on a Dime: Tools, tips, and tricks to revamp or upgrade an institutional website.”"

In this article, I’m sharing a lot of really useful (and cheap) resources and tips for anybody planning or working on an in-house redesign.

By the way, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.