Web Content Management Forum

Planning and Design Phase

With the successful completion of the discovery and research phase of our website redesign project, New City and the SHU web content management team have moved right along into Phase 2 -  Planning and Design!

Since the return from holiday break, the SHU Web Committee has been busy reviewing and approving wire frames for top level landing pages, such as Academics, Campus Life and Admissions, as well as secondary landing pages for the Colleges, departmental sites and academic programs. Once the wire frames are approved, New City will begin production of the various template designs.

Two weeks ago, New City presented three home page design concepts for the web committee to review. Committee members provided feedback on what they liked and/or disliked about each design. While 75% of the committee favored one particular design concept, there were elements from the other two designs that were preferred. With the summarized feedback and suggestions from the committee, New City presented a revised homepage design which is currently under review. The initial reaction has been very positive, and the web team is excited with the creative direction that New City is taking us!

While SHU’s new website is being designed, New City will simultaneously build a mobile friendly website using a  technique called responsive design.  According to Kayla Knight of Smashing Magazine, “Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.”

In the meantime, the web content management team is in the process of creating a content inventory, and will be in touch with departments across campus to begin editing content. Our goal is to have the bulk of our web content edited and refined by the end of spring semester, to ensure a smooth and efficient content migration to our new site.

Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting project! Feel free to contact us for feedback or more information at sitefeedback@sacredheart.edu

The Web Content Management Team
Nancy Boudreau
Kim Galiette
Caitlin Robles

Design and Sketch – What would your homepage look like?

“Imagine you are a 17-year-old high school student from North Carolina visiting the Sacred Heart University website for the first time. Now ask yourself, what information would I be looking to find or to do on the home page? Now briefly sketch what that home page might look like.”

>>> Play Video of Our Sketching Session with New City

The task is not as easy as it sounds, but last week, over 30 faculty, staff and students participated in a website sketching session with New City, our website redesign firm.  Participants were divided up into 5 groups and given a different persona of a prospective student or parent and asked to sketch a homepage to fit the needs of that user. 

New City representatives, Rebekah Godshall, Eva Floyd and Sara Andrew, spent four days on campus last week reporting back on research findings, conducting this sketching session as well as several other wire framing and design exercises with the Marketing & Communications Team. Based on research, interviews, results of the KJ sessions conducted during their last visit and these sketchboarding exercises,  top level navigation and home page priorities were discussed and mapped out to set the stage for our site architecture.

On Thursday, the senior management team attended a design gut check exercise.  Participants were shown 30 different websites for 20 seconds on a big screen and asked to give their initial or gut reaction to the website’s design appeal (typography, use of photography, layout, color, features, links, etc.) by rating each from 1 – 5 (1 being the worst and 5 being the best). The results were tallied and the group spent time discussing their likes and dislikes. “I definitely see a trend in the results,” commented Sara Andrews, lead web designer with New City.

It was an enlightening and productive week spent with New City and representatives across campus. The results and conclusions of last week’s exercises together with the information gathered from their previous campus visits and research completed to date will help New City with the creative direction of our home page design and top level landing pages. When we return from our holiday break in January, New City will begin creating home page design concepts.

Until then, have a  wonderful holiday season and best wishes in the New Year!

With warm regards,

The Web Content Management Team
Nancy Boudreau
Kim Galiette
Caitlin Robles

Comments and suggestions? Contact us at sitefeedback@sacredheart.edu

 

KJ Sessions Kick Off a Success!

Last week marked the successful kick off of our website redesign discovery phase.  New City representatives  -  Pamela Martin, Rebekah Godshall, and Eva Floyd -  spent three days on campus meeting with the web team and various members of the SHU community.  In that time they also conducted seven KJ sessions with SHU faculty, staff, administration, alumni and students.

The “KJ Method” is an engaging brainstorming process developed by Jiro Kawakita, a Japenese anthropologist, as a way for small groups to reach consensus on complex problems quickly. KJ Sessions also help organizations with strategic planning and problem solving. 

Participants were asked the question “Who is our audience? Who are we trying to reach?” followed by the focus question, “What do people come to our website to find or to do?”  Participants agreed that our web audience is comprised mainly of prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff, as well as the community at large, high school guidance counselors, mentors, coaches, competitors, clinical partners, potential employers and internships.

Each participant wrote their answers to the focus question on yellow Post-it Notes, working silently and independently for about 10 minutes. Participants then put all their sticky notes on the wall in no particular order. Next, they were asked to group the items that have a similar goal or purpose. Once sorted, the participants were asked to name each group and prioritize the groups by listing and voting on their top three groups. Once everyone voted, the moderator tallied the votes.

The top three information groups were Academics,  Admissions, and About SHU.  The Academic group scored particularly high with an emphasis on information regarding individual academic programs.  The information from these sessions will help us prioritize and ensure that the content our web audience is looking for is available. 

New City’s next steps will be to conduct one-on-one interviews with current and prospective students, as well as interviews with some of SHU’s senior staff.  Additionally, New City will return to campus the week of December 5 to meet with more faculty, staff and students to conduct collaborative wireframing sessions.  Wireframes are schetches used to determine what types of information and elements should be included on our web pages. We will be reaching out to SHU community members across campus for participation. More details on that to come!

Keep checking our blog for more updates as we move forward in this exciting redesign project!  As always, send us your feedback at sitefeedback@sacredheart.edu.  

Thank you for your continued support.

The WCM Team

Nancy Boudreau
Kim Galiette
Caitlin Robles

SHU Website Redesign in the Works!

The Web Content Management (WCM) team is excited to announce that the university has selected a new web design company and content management system (CMS) to redesign the Sacred Heart University website, with an anticipated launch of August 2012! After carefully reviewing nearly 20 proposals, the Web Team and Web Redesign Committee met with four web design firms and three CMS companies. At the conclusion of the presentations, the group unanimously voted to hire New City, an award-winning web design company based out of Virginia, and Terminal Four, an innovative higher education content management company.

 The SHU Website Redesign Committee consists of 17 individuals representing departments across campus, including Nancy Boudreau, Kim Galiette, and Caitlin Robles, together with Funda Alp, Alane Bikovsky, Renata Cioffi, Maura Coppola, Tracy Deer-Mirek, Diana Fitzsimons, Frances Grodzinsky, Alexis Haakonsen, Matthew Kenney, Christopher Lavoie, Katie Nichols, Jamie Romeo, Julie Savino and Deborah Surbey.

Beginning next week, New City and the Web Team will kick off our web redesign Discovery Phase, a fun and engaging process of gathering feedback from all SHU constituents. New City will be on campus Wednesday – Friday, October 26 - 28 to conduct focus groups with prospective students and current undergraduate, part-time and graduate students, and parents. New City will simultaneously host several brainstorming sessions, also known as KJ sessions, with faculty and staff across campus, including representatives from admissions, student life, academics, mission, university advancement and marketing. In the coming weeks, the University’s senior staff will participate in one-on-one interviews as well. The results of the Discovery Phase will set the creative and strategic direction of our website redesign.

We plan on keeping the University Community informed about the progress of the new website, so be sure to subscribe to our blog http://sacredheartuniversity.typepad.com/words_from_a_web_diva/ for updates.  In the meantime, we encourage feedback from everyone within the SHU community. Please email sitefeedback@sacredheart.edu with any questions, comments or suggestions.

Thank you for your continued support!

The WCM Team

Nancy Boudreau
Kim Galiette
Caitlin Robles

 

SHU Website Wins 2011 WebAward for 3rd Consecutive Year!

I am pleased to announce that for the third year in a row, the Sacred Heart University website has received the Web Marketing Association's University Standard of Excellence Award for outstanding achievement in web development!!

The Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAward Competition sets the standard of excellence for website development.  Best websites are selected by judges from around the world who review the entered websites using the following seven criteria: design, ease of use, copywriting, interactivity, use of technology, innovation and content. SHU's website scored higher than the industry average in four categories, rating especially high in both content and copywriting. 

The WebAward Competition is the premier award recognition program for Web developers and marketers worldwide. For more details on the award and recipients, visit WebAward. 

Congrats to Sacred Heart University and the Web Content Mangement Team!

Is your website ready?

With the start of a new academic year upon us, the WCM team is preparing for a full plate of exciting projects. More on that to come in my next post (oh, the suspense!). . . . but first and foremost, let's talk about your department's website! Is your site ready for the new academic year? Here are a few things to ask yourself . . .

• Is your department's website up-to-date with new program information?
• Have new faculty and staff been added?
• Have fall/spring open houses, lectures, and other important events been posted?
• Do you have news/press releases/faculty accomplishments to add?
• Do you have new photography or video to add?
• And what old content needs to be deleted?

Let's start the year off right and get our websites on track. If your department needs assistance, contact WCM today.

Thank you!  

 

SHU Prepares for 45th Commencement Weekend

This weekend will mark Sacred Heart University's 45^th Commencement Weekend. For complete information on time of events, speakers, and honorary degree recipients, please visit the Commencement Website.

Graduate Commencement will take place this Saturday, May 14, at 1:30pm. Undergraduate Commencement will take place this Sunday, May 15, at 11:00am.

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees will be presented to two distinguished recipients at the Undergraduate Commencement ceremony. Dr. John J. Petillo, Sacred Heart University’s newly appointed president, will bestow the honors on Francis J. Butler, who heads FADICA, which stands for Founders and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities; and Murray Martin, chief executive officer of Pitney Bowes Inc., headquartered in Stamford. Dr. Petillo will also offer remarks to the Class of 2011 at that ceremony.

At Graduate Commencement, Christopher K. McLeod, who heads the 454 Life Sciences Corp., will deliver the commencement address. Mr. McLeod and Judith Persichilli, who is the president and CEO of Catholic Health East, will receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees at this ceremony.

Congratulations and best wishes to SHU's Class of 2011! 

SHU launches new International Student Services website

 
Currently more than 140 international students from 27 countries are pursuing Undergraduate and Graduate studies at Sacred Heart University. Due to this growing population, our Web and Admissions Team have developed a comprehensive online international student guide.  Here you will find helfpful information and links on everything from travel, U.S. customs and English as a Second Language, to housing, shopping and dining.

Visit the International Student Services website today and get yourself acquainted with our campus and the surrounding area, as well as life in the United States!

 

Time for Spring Cleaning!

Albeit a bit of a cliché . . . but yes, it's time to start spring cleaning our website! With the end of the academic year quickly approaching, now is a good time to clean up your department's web pages. Toss old news and events, delete outdated information, and begin to add and/or develop new content for the summer months and upcoming fall semester.

Please keep in mind the various tools our web content management systems offers to enhance your site with photography, e-newsletters, feature boxes, and online forms.

The WCM department is here to assist you with any of these special features, as well as help your department with your social media efforts.

Contact WCM for more details.

Get Your Website in Shape with Web Boot Camp!

Is your department's website in need of a makeover? Need help or motivation? Contact WCM today to schedule a two-hour boot camp with Web Content Management and get your site in shape!

In a nutshell, we will go over your website on the big screen, deleting old content and adding new content LIVE on-the-spot. We will review competitor's websites for best practices, discuss processes and ways to improve customer service by streamlining content and reorganizing your site navigation. For content edits that are more involved, we create an action plan and task list to complete moving forward.

WCM has hosted several successful boot camps with departments across campus. The results and feedback are always positive.

"That is the best two hours I spent all year," said one department chair.

Email sitefeedback@sacredheart.edu and schedule your Web Boot Camp today!