Redevelopment Project

If you haven’t already, go take a look at the new “areas of study” site (titled Majors, Minors, & Programs). Team members from Publications, Marketing, Design Services, and Digital Communications spent the summer participating in training, evaluating program information at other institutions, and poring over catalog information, department websites, admissions information, existing print material, and even the scripts for those program videos to compile and create supportive, consistent, audience-appropriate information for each major, minor, etc., at UMW.

The pictures on the homepage are pulled from our branded images, Great Minds stories, and news articles. They appear randomly and link to the offering they represent. Each degree/program includes clear icons indicating the type of offering, links to the department, catalog entry, financial aid, and admissions information request form. We’ve incorporated video and testimonials. We can generate a list of offerings for each department or college, and a list of each type of entry such as major, minor, certificate, adult degree program, etc. Graduate programs link to relevant (newly updated) information on the admissions site, for now, and minors associated with majors redirect to those majors.

The outcome is exceptional – and incomplete.

Now that we’ve established the baseline with the information available, we’re ready to get updates on both the published offerings and those that are missing from the list. As with most things, we’ve created a submission form that exactly mirrors the content template we completed for each offering.

We want to be sure this information appropriately reflects, to prospective students, each offering. We want to make sure it’s helpful and provides next steps to move prospects along on their journey. We will be working to pull relevant Great Minds and news stories into each program. We’d like to focus on key faculty and highlight successes in these spaces. We need your help to get there.

So go take a look. We’re looking forward to your suggestions.

We knew going into this project that the existing campus directory and people search tools were problematic. The existing system couldn’t be migrated into the new site, so a change was necessary. The new campus directory is the result of a lot of of coffee, late nights, and data imported from both IT and HR and verified to the best of our ability through the academic catalogs and the contents of the website. We spent the summer calling departments to make sure phone and fax numbers were correct. We pulled pictures from repositories of employee photos and the contents of news stories. We collected, sorted, organized, and completed as much information as we could. Now it’s your turn.

We didn’t publish anything we couldn’t quickly verify, which in many cases includes adjunct and visiting faculty profiles. It’s ok, we can get them updated and make sure this is a very useful resource for all of us, we just need your help to do it. If you find a problem with (or lack of) an employee listing, with department information, or with building data, please let us know asap. We’ve created some simple options for reporting:

• Update your profile, or submit this form to notify us of a missing profile.
• Suggest changes to a department or building.
• Notify the right departments that you’ve moved offices.

Notice the “office move” form. If you relocate please let HR know asap. That form also notifies us of the change so we can reflect it in the directory.

This new directory is going to be much more robust and flexible than the old text-only system. In the coming days we’ll provide instructions for replacing the old department directory pages on your website with new, cleaner, more robust pages. Stay tuned, and as always, let us know what you think of this change!

Student Directory Search

One of the major changes to the directory is the separation of student and employee searches. We’ve added an option to the search selector allowing users to search for basic student information. There’s also a button on the campus directory pointing to the student search tool.

Obviously, our No. 1 concern was having the web available at all times. Beyond that, we’ve focused on improved user experience, compliance with legal requirements, and better adherence to best practices. All of this translates into better navigation, cleaner interfaces, more focus on photography and storytelling, well crafted content, and smart use/reuse of the information we generate daily. We’re working toward a create once, publish everywhere (COPE) model.

Skip to the before & after image slideshow

• What you need to know about the new campus directory
• Majors, Minors, and Programs: moving beyond the baseline

What’s changed?

Stability

The new site has been launched on a WordPress-dedicated hosting provider capable of handling the extraordinary pressure we put on umw.edu. We’re focused on a more sustainable, governed site-development process as we continue to move toward a completely rebuilt site.

Audience Awareness

Navigation on www.umw.edu was often found to be unintuitive. User feedback in tests included words like “cumbersome” and “complicated” and “impossible.” Enormous care was put into evaluating, testing, and restructuring navigation on the homepage and beyond. Additionally, new target audience homepages (prospective students, students, faculty & staff, parents) now focus on their specific audience.

Significant Progress

We’ve rebuilt www.umw.edu and admissions.umw.edu, with a few changes still to come. You now have entirely new (mobile friendly) sites for students, faculty & staff, parents, events, admissions, academic degrees & programs, campus directory, visitors, Great Minds, and more. There’s a new system-wide web calendaring tool, a completely new way to pull directory information into department sites, much more information about campuses and buildings (including easy-access maps), more robust employee profiles in the campus directory, integration with external tools such as Hobson’s and ExpertFile, and so much more!

What hasn’t changed?

What has seen very little, if any, change with the launch are the other subdomains: academics.umw.edu, adminfinance.umw.edu, students.umw.edu, president.umw.edu, etc. You will hear more in the coming months about migration plans for those and other areas of the site.

What’s next?

With Phase 1 launched we’re going to take a step back and smooth out any rough edges. We’ll depend on and thoroughly review all user feedback. We’ll monitor analytics and Siteimprove reports, and work on offering comprehensive on-demand site administrator training. We’ll also work with IT, Financial Aid, and Residence Life to rework and rebuild their sites in fall 2015. We plan to start working with academic and other areas spring 2016.

Have feedback on the new site? Share it with us!

Before & After

Select an image to open a slideshow of before and after screen captures.

The homepage, 2011-2015

Homepage 2015

Parents Page – old

Parents Page – New

Admissions – old

Admissions – New

Events – old

Events – New

Graduate Admissions – Old

Graduate Admissions – New

Great Minds – Old

Great Minds – New

Programs – Old

Programs – New

News – Old

News – New

Visitors – Old

Visitors – new

Employee listing – old

Employee listing – new