Website Redesign

Offering a consistent look and feel on the Web at a big university is a challenge. When implementing a content management system across hundreds of units or departments isn’t an option – for budget reason, some institutions have to adopt a different approach.

At the University of Alabama, the central web communications team includes only 4 people. That’s why Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications, is a big proponent of the “teach-them-how-to-fish” approach. His team has always designed and published web resources to help the larger university community get up to speed with their web presence, using more recently WordPress as their web platform of choice.

Last April they launched 3 branded WordPress themes to create the winning combo of ease of use with WordPress and consistency with a unique web template. With the release earlier this summer of WP 3.0, UA Web Communication Team was able to merge the 3 themes into a single one including some very powerful customization options to accommodate the special needs of different units on campus.

Here’s a regular second-level page, the Admissions web page on the main website:

And, here are a few screenshots of the WP 3.0 template:

I asked Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications at the University of Alabama, to answer a few questions about this project.

1) Did you develop the WP theme in-house? Who did it?

The theme was developed in-house by our Web Communications team, led by developer Matthew Muro. Matthew previously built and released our first UA-branded WordPress themes earlier this spring, but as the new WP 3.0 version emerged, he took the opportunity to significantly improve the functionality and flexibility of the themes. The 3.0 theme utilizes a custom admin panel that provides control of major design aspects of a site without requiring customization of the code itself. He was also able to create a single, united theme based on our UA Web Templates that provided a number of different layout and configuration options, instead of requiring users to choose which theme they wanted up front. In this way, we hope the theme becomes more fluid and flexible to current and future needs.

2) How did your campus community react to the launch of the WP themes?

The feedback we have received has been very positive. In fact, the provision of this theme is in large part the result of listening to much discussion among campus webmasters and functional users. The need for a “plug-and-play” solution for campus web sites has been the most significant need we’ve heard in the past few years, and while any solution requires some degree of effort and customization to be successful, we feel the theme is a great resource for units lacking full-time web expertise or resources to obtain that expertise to be able to easily build an accessible, usable, effective and institutionally-branded web site. The theme is provided as a true open-source resource, with no stipulations other than it must be used for an official or unofficial University of Alabama web site only, and that its usage must not violate general UA web policies. Significant time and energy has gone into creating tutorials and resources on our Web Guide site that make customizing the theme to meet specific needs a simpler process.

3) Do you provide hosting for their WP install? Do you offer to run their website from your own WP 3.0 install?

Hosting for WordPress web sites is available through the campus’s office of information technology, and they’re working to further streamline the process to improve how these sites are deployed and managed. As WP 3.0′s code base is now merged with WordPress MU, it should become easier and more efficient to roll out new WordPress web sites in a more scalable and repeatable manner going forward.

4) Any good examples of implemented WP UA websites to share?

This theme was just released a few weeks ago, so really it’s just getting started. But we have seen great results with using WordPress for institutional web sites, which informed our decision to offer WordPress themes. Our news center suite (UA news , Dialog – our faculty and staff newsletter and and our magazine Research) are custom WordPress sites, and by using WordPress we’ve been able to empower content providers to manage these sites almost exclusively. And we previously tested the first version of our UA WordPress themes with our own Editorial Style Manual as a proof-of-concept.
There are many campus web sites already using WordPress, so this new theme provides additional options for those sites to utilize institutional resources and offers others the ability to have that institutional brand. We’re treating this theme as one of our primary offerings to campus at large and we will continue to invest our time and resources to improving the themes and the resources available to those who wish to use them, with the goal of significantly improving the performance, consistency and effectiveness of our overall campus web presence through the most efficient means possible.

This is just a quick post about a newly redesigned website: Macalester College’s.

Nick Balcom Raleigh, Online Communications Coordinator at Macalester, emailed me a couple of weeks ago about the redesign – so it’s about time I share it with you :-)

The new version was developed in-house by a team of four and has replaced a previous design from 2004.

Nick explained that the new design is built using the open-source CSS framework Blueprint, jQuery and jQuery UI plugin to enhance interactive elements and is compliant with W3C and ADA.

I really like how the live Facebook feed is integrated in the footer.

The contrast between the main area and the footer/background with bright colors in the former and sepia tones in the second makes this design even more powerful. If you want to read more about its different features, you can have a look at this post written by the team.

What do you think?

Whether you’re working on a big redesign project or have embraced a more iterative redesign approach, usability testing should be considered as one of your web work cornerstones.

I’m sure you’ve already read or heard that testing with only 5 users will provide you great insights to improve the usability of your website (Gosh, I even wrote a post about a conference session about this — 5 years ago ;-). That’s why there is no reason for skipping Do-It-Yourself usability tests.

In a column about the topic published on May 24, 2010, usability expert Jakob Nielsen explains that it’s a good idea to invite all the web team members as well as some executives to observe your usability tests.

Nielsen lists 5 benefits to these usability testing sessions attended by the web team at large:

“Credibility. Because they’ve seen how you derive insights, they’ll believe your usability findings and reports (vs. thinking you made them up or are just offering your personal opinions or preferences).

Fewer design mistakes. When designers and developers have seen their actual customers, they’re less likely to go overboard with design ideas that aren’t going to work for users. The better the raw UI, the fewer fixes will be needed after the next round of user testing.”

Nielsen adds that executives who attend these sessions are “more likely to prioritize user experience after experiencing users” – including in their budget allocations.

If you’d love to show usability testing to your boss or train your team members to run these tests at your institution, you should definitely consider signing up for Usability Testing 360 Webinars, scheduled on June 16 & 17 (and if you have the chance to have a dedicated usability specialist in your team, Nielsen’s workshops are also great to perfect your team member skills).

Led by Chas Grundy from the University of Notre Dame, this 2-webinar series includes a first session that will tell you all you need to know to run your own usability tests and a second session that will show you live usability tests at different stages of a web design project.

This second session will be perfect to demonstrate the power of usability testing to your website stakeholders, boss or VP.

Registration for this 2-webinar series are open until June 7, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/usability360
The $300 registration fee includes a 1-year access to the recordings in case some of your team members can’t make it the days of the live sessions.

Have you noticed how more and more institutions choose open source content management systems such as Drupal, WordPress or DotCMS to power their websites?

The trend has been accelerating these past few months with several high profile redesigned websites such as Duke University and Bates College as well as other redesigns in process.

With more and more higher ed institutions opting for open source solutions, it makes no doubt that these non-commercial solutions should be considered by committees or teams in charge of evaluating possible web content management systems at your institution (that is if you don’t have any or aren’t happy with yours, obviously).

So, if you’re planning to implement a new CMS at your institution, you should definitely consider registering for the first higher ed open source CMS Fair.

What is an open-source CMS Fair?

Think about your traditional college fairs, but for CMS (and without the brochures ;-).

During this 3-webinar series scheduled on April 13, 14 and 15, 2010, you’ll be able to pick the brain of three of your higher ed colleagues who have implemented and managed an open source CMS.

The ultimate goal of this webinar series is really to give you exclusive access to expertise and experience that you’d be able to use in your own evaluation process while comparing 3 of the most popular CMS in higher education: Drupal, WordPress and DotCMS:

DotCMS for Higher Ed Websites
Michael Fienen, Web Marketing Manager at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, KS, will tell you all you need to know about DotCMS and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. He will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

Drupal for Higher Ed Websites
Blyth Morrell, Web Services Manager at Duke University, will tell you all you need to know about Drupal and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. She will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

WordPress/WordPress MU for Higher Ed Websites
Shelley Keith, Web Site Coordinator at Southern Arkansas University, will tell you all you need to know about WordPress and WordPress MU and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. She will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

And, if you need an extra incentive to register for this great series, how about 2 extra on-demand webinars about CMS implementation and redesigns for free?

If you register by March 30, 2010 for Open-Source CMS Fair, you’ll get free access to these 2 webinars until July 31st, 2010:

How to survive a Website Redesign & a CMS Implementation
(Recorded on February 17, 2010)
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.

Website Redesign & CMS Implementation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(Recorded 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.

If you want to learn why Drupal, WordPress or DotCMS could be your next web content management system, make sure you register for Open Source CMS Fair at www.higheredexperts.com/cmsfair.

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