College background Old Web site Project research New Web site development Implementation Lessons Learned.

Designing a New User-Centric College Public Website –

Lessons Learned

George SackettWeb Content Supervisor

College backgroundOld Web siteProject researchNew Web site development ImplementationLessons Learned

Outline

Largest community college system in Missouri serving an area of about 700 square miles; created by area voters in 1962

Four campuses, three education centers Transfer, career and developmental programs Non-credit continuing education courses Various workforce development initiatives A “League for Innovation” institution

About STLCC

26,000 credit students each semester 40,000 non-credit each year 31,000 workforce development students 130 credit programs 57 workforce development programs 1,800 faculty (420 FT) 3,500 employees

Numbers

Why Create a New Site?

Click icon to add clip art Issues and problems

with old site Developing a new

brand identity for the institution

“One College”, … but not a well defined identity on the web site

Site is difficult to navigate – and to find content – 16,000 pages with no standard navigation

Internal use content mixed in with other content

Pages did not follow best practices for web design

Most pages did not comply with our loosely defined college standards

Issues and Problems

Common to have over 2,000 broken links Non-compliance with ADA requirements Out-of-date and conflicting content No unified appearance – brand identity was

fragmented at best to almost non-existent No workflow, editing or review process

Issues and Problems (cont)

Trying to represent the constant of the district-wide college while maintaining the uniqueness of each campus

Taking content from the existing 16,000 pages to distill the items of need to audiences

Content Challenges

Meetings at each campus to introduce project and seek cooperation and support

2005 – Audience research conducted by contracted firm• Current and prospective students – focus groups

and online surveys• Continuing Education and high school guidance

counselors – focus groups

• Key administrators and faculty influencers – phone interviews

• Larger sample of faculty and staff – random, online survey

Discovery – Audiences

Registration Hub for student news and communications Access to all programs and classes Class availability, times/room numbers,

changes, grades Do everything online:• Pay for classes• Get parking passes• Get books• “Not have to go to the campus”

Student Web Expectations

Ervin Marketing Report, May 2006

84.7% - Registration 82.4% - Student Resources 81.8% - Class Schedules 77.9% - Blackboard 60.3% - College Catalog

29.9% - can’t find what they are looking for

Reasons Students Say They Access the Public Website

Ervin Marketing Report, May 2006

The existing public website will be replaced in its entirety

The new website will focus on the needs of our external constituents and will incorporate the College’s new marketing, branding and image campaign• Provide an informative, effective marketing tool• Provide for the needs of current students

Project Scope

Align with the college strategic mission To increase enrollment at the college Simplify the experience for students Management, faculty, staff and

administrators given the ability to develop and update content to web-site

Project Intentions

The contents of the new website will be developed by the outside vendor

A second vendor will take responsibility for building the initial Web site

The new web site will utilize the Serena Collage web content management system to simplify the publishing process and enable a workflow driven web authoring environment

The Game Plan

Rebrand the site to project STLCC as one college

Build a site that allows visitors to select a path based on personal needs

Create a new web content delivery system:• Easy to update• Reinforces web standards• Provides a consistent user experience• Flexible to respond to changing needs

Overall Objectives

Huge change in the culture of the way the website was maintained

Shifting responsibility from campus to Community Relations and web coordinators

Web Authoring as a distributed responsibility

Identify person(s) responsible for web authorship

Process Change Issues

Taxonomy - (navigation, structure, organization)• Ad Hoc Web Advisory Committee – played a big role• Organized by function rather than content

Frequently accessed content on home page• Without trying to include everything

Navigation and Content Design

User Evaluation and Discussion

‣ Automate consistency and standards through templates and required elements

‣ Rich text editing eliminates the need for HTML or web editor experience

‣ Manage workflows with the combination of task management and a review/approval system

Web Content Management System

‣ Allow authorized users to easily add or update content “anytime, anywhere” through a browser

‣ Roll pages back to a previous version as needed

‣ Schedule content replacement or removal

Web Content Management System

Home Page

Newsroom

About the College

Campus Page

Calendar System

SungardHE Banner (ERP) Self-Service BlackBoard LMS Home-grown applications• Course Schedule• Schedule of Late-Starting Courses• Employee Directory• Continuing Education Registration• Student Application• Sexual Harassment, FERPA, and Diversity Tutorials

New system – Windows Live student e-mail

Integration with Existing Internal Systems

‣ New website went live March 9, 2008:

‣ In order to have a go-live date, a “line” had to be drawn somewhere on what content would be part of the initial deployment

• We used the Ad Hoc Web Committee to develop basic guidelines for what was to be included for Phase 1

• There are some whose content was left out that felt their content was too important to not be included

Phase I Completed

Representing a district-wide college (“One College” brand) while presenting the uniqueness of each campus.

Underestimating timeline for content and technical development

Working with several different vendors

Focus can get sidetracked with input from concerned parties

Challenges Along the Way

New positions, new employees

Deploying new WCMS in conjunction with new site

Internal audiences – time it takes to communicate – delays caused by summer schedules

Managing expectations of new site – Launched with 1,600 vs. 16,000 pages

Challenges Along the Way

“Phase 2” almost completed -• Corrections and updates - Added over 1250

pages based on feedback and metrics analysis

• Development of interactive, more dynamic content

• WCMS contributor training

• Development of department and “academic discipline” pages

The Next Steps

Implementation of enrollment management tools• CRM• Variable web content/print

Continue to add content that was not included in the first two phases that fit the objective of the new site

Revival of the Web Advisory Committee my.stlcc.edu student portal- SharePoint Blogs/Social networking Continued focus on brand management

Future plans - “Phase 3”

The overall goal of project of creating a user-centric website was achieved

The new website contributed to the goal of increase in enrollment

Phase I rolled out smoothly National Council for Marketing and Public

Relations – Silver Award

Things That Went Well

The use of an outside consultant• Provided confirmation and justification for taking

on this huge project• Justified funding for project• Identified the need for dedicated positions

Active involvement of the faculty and staff Use of outside vendors for web

development Good internal cooperation between

technical and content

Things That Went Well

Integration of home grown apps successful WCMS – edit, review and deploy functions

went smoothly Implementation of AP style Setting a deadline and trying to stick to it -

forced us to make some tough decisions to meet that deadline

Things That Went Well

Outside vendor• Web development team needed a lot of effort to

get up to speed with our WCMS• Vendor used for writing of content never really hit

the mark

Things That Could Have Gone Better

WCMS• Issues integrating applications - vendor never

got a handle on this• User interface – edit function not as “friendly” as

desirable – Many support calls from “occasional” user• Task management is cumbersome and does not

match our business processes• Uncertain future of vendor support• Required desktop settings not necessarily

compatible with campus settings

Things That Could Have Gone Better

In house team undermanned – made meeting deadlines very challenging

Content needs to be re-written in a more “user friendly” style – easier to read

Better communication/feedback process with faculty and staff during development and subsequently

Faster implementation of additional/missing content • Departments & academic disciplines• Dynamic content

Things That Could Have Gone Better

Hard coding of static information – outside vendor not familiar with internal resources for dynamic content

We had more hardware than was necessary – ASP & ASP.NET integration with CMS not realized until after learning more about WCMS capability

Internal technical staff would have benefitted from earlier training

Identifying and training more content contributors earlier

Things That Could Have Gone Better

The battle of the home page• Next to the navigation, this was the biggest

focus of discussion• Too much ended up being included making the

page very busy and, to many, unappealing• Many links were represented by both buttons

and text links Some groups failed to take ownership of

content Failed to maintain active Web Advisory

Committee

Things That Could Have Gone Better

Questions?

Contact Us

George SackettWeb Content Supervisor

[email protected]/George [email protected]

Presentation is available online at:http://www.stlcc.edu/presentations/