Resources before

Resources after

We appreciate your feedback. Thank you for helping us to improve the site.

Overall:

• the old design was 760px wide while the new is 960px
• the top navbar has been changed to accommodate a greater number of links and to stay open until you close it
• there is a consistent footer on all new pages
• pages in the new design are running under the Cascade CMS

The homepage

Before

After (navbar closed)

After (navbar open)

The previous homepage had three changing content areas (Gallery, “Belt” buttons, and Headlines). The new homepage adds three more: “Differentiator” squares, Events and From the Community, and the Belt has been converted to a Highlights section. The universal navbar also applies to the new homepage; it appeared on the previous homepage in a highly modified form, with no drop down.

About Wesleyan

Before

After

Landing pages such as About now have a narrative focus with the lists of links moved into the left navigation. This layout shows the basic form of new pages: the topbar, header graphic, left navigation, central content space, related links column, and a standard footer at the base of the page.

Admission

Before

After

Admission landing page

Before

After

Alumni

Before

After

Parents

Before

After

New pages

Campus Life

Offices & Services

Footer

New footer

More information outlining the changes will be posted here soon. Meanwhile, if you have suggestions or questions about the new site, or you want to report an issue, please use the Web Feedback Form.

From: announcement@wesleyan.edu
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:27 AM
To: Wesleyan Campus Community
Subject: Wesleyan’s New Web Site

Dear Members of the Wesleyan Community,

Tomorrow, University Communications and ITS will launch the redesigned Wesleyan University homepage, Admission web site, and several major landing pages (About, Academics, Campus Life, Alumni, Parents, and Offices & Services). At this time, these are the only pages that will be changed to the new look. This begins a major transformation of the Wesleyan web site that is expected to continue throughout 2010. All departments and sub-pages will be converted to the new design and content management system (CMS) over the coming 12–18 months.

The new design features significant improvements in navigation and content presentation. Also, the new Cascade content management system promises new capability within your department to develop, maintain and update content on your pages. ITS is pleased with the performance of this new system and we think you will be pleased, also. If you need help with navigation, please use the Search Box at the upper right portion of the screen.

We invite you to check the ‘From the Community’ section of the homepage. This new feature offers content from the new Wesleyan Community Blog. Anyone with a Wesleyan username and password is welcome to post and comment. Check it out at http://community.blogs.wesleyan.edu!

Join us in making Wesleyan’s online presence open, vibrant, and engaging.

University Communications & Information Technology Services (ITS)

From: announcement@wesleyan.edu
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:01 PM
To: Wesleyan Campus Community
Subject: Redesigned Wesleyan Website Launch

The redesigned Wesleyan University homepage, Admission web site, and several major landing pages (About, Academics, Campus Life, Alumni, Parents, and Offices & Services) will be launched on Thursday, November 12. These pages are only the first to be changed to the new design. This begins a major transformation of the Wesleyan website that will continue throughout 2010. All departments and sub-pages will be converted to the new design and content management system over the coming 12–18 months.

University Communications and ITS

The survey provided important insights about behaviors, expectations, and desires for the new Wesleyan website with input from each of our main audiences. We ran two versions: one for prospective students and their parents (which we’ll call “prospectives”), another for the Wesleyan community including current students, faculty, staff and alumni (which we’ll call “community;” sometimes we will distinguish “alumni” as a separate group owing to their large numbers).

Below is a summary of our findings. Visit the redesign site for in-depth commentary and data about the prospective community, campus community, and alumni.

Navigation

Simplicity. Participants from every audience expressed a strong desire for a simple navigation, requesting that the menu system be clear, easy, intuitive, user-friendly, well-organized, and straightforward. Many participants noted that navigation is the “most important element to redesign.” There was a strong preference among all participants for sublinks to be revealed on-click or hover.

Survey results indicated that prospectives are more likely to use navigation menus on the website, while members of the community are more likely to be looking for specific information and use the search box. Prospectives and community members identified similar, though not identical priorities. Differences were in the range of what we expected given people’s varying familiarity with the site. [read more about Navigation]

Photography

Photos! It was clear through both the survey questions and comments from prospectives and the community that photos are important, and that integrating them into the homepage is essential. Most prospectives and community participants prefer photo slideshows. Requests for interesting, excellent, and large photos were consistent. Some had additional suggestions that the visual content include student artwork, 360-degree photos, historic images, and construction/renovation projects specifically. [read more about Photography]

Design

Dignified and usable. There was a strong request for a clean, simple, uncluttered and visually appealing site among survey participants. Along with requests for a site that was classy, dignified and elegant, people hoped for something that was also welcoming and friendly. [read more about Design]

Spirit

A “Wesleyan” energy. Prospective students talked about the role of a college website as a first and lasting impression of the university. The community echoed this sentiment by expressing a desire for the site’s design to be unique and to reflect the spirit and character of Wesleyan. Both groups of participants noted important role of the website in not only distinguishing Wes from other liberal arts colleges, but also in reflecting the creative energy and spirit that defines us. [read more about Spirit]

Additional points

In addition to these main themes, the following topics were also highlighted in the comments:

• Multimedia
• Content
• Alumni, and different audiences
• Critique of the current site

Look for a new post in the coming days where we’ll share results for both the prospective student/parent and Wesleyan community surveys!

If you haven’t taken the survey yet today is your last chance! Of course, we welcome your feedback here on the blog as we continue our work.

http://www.wesleyan.edu/redesign/survey/

Thank you,
The Web Design Team

Thanks for all of your feedback so far. This is a challenging and exciting project and your input is a key part of the process.

For the past several weeks, the web redesign team has collaborated on three concepts for the homepage and a few landing pages. We are inviting you to critique our design sketches and offer suggestions. Concepts A, B, and C are works in progress, and with the help of this blog and several other focus groups we plan to narrow down a design direction by April 30.

http://www.wesleyan.edu/redesign/presentation.html

It will help if your comments address design, content, and navigation. Keep in mind that our primary target audience (for the homepage) is prospective students and their parents. We look forward to your point of view.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for your comments so far about the current web site. Over the past two weeks the design team has been discussing informational models for the new homepage, a site-wide navigation bar, and secondary pages. Right now we’re asking for your feedback on a few specific questions.

First up is a proposed list of major links for the homepage. Please take a look at the following list, as a starting point. We’d love to hear what you think—especially from the point of view of a prospective student—about whether this covers a relevant range of links to page destinations within the main Wesleyan site.

Specific questions

• would the list help you as a prospective student wanting to know more about Wesleyan?
• are there any other categories you’d like to see included? (primary bullets)
• are there any other detail items you’d like to see? (secondary bullets)
• what could we remove from the list?

Major links list

• About
  • Why Wesleyan?
  • Virtual Tour
  • Middletown Area
  • Notable Alumni
  • Visiting Wesleyan
• Academics
  • Departments/Majors
  • Courses
  • Libraries
  • Grad
  • GLSP
• Admission
  • Tuition
  • Financial Aid
  • Meet the Staff
  • Ask a Student
  • Dates and Deadlines
• Campus Life
  • Orientation
  • Athletics
  • Residential Life
  • Events/Calendar
  • Dining
• Community
  • Students
  • Parents
  • Alumni
  • Faculty
  • Staff
• Offices & Services
  • Administration
  • Office of the President
  • Registrar
  • Student Affairs
  • Technology

(Please note: some of these pages don’t have a current equivalent and would have to be created as part of the redesign process; the list is just part of the content that will be included on the new homepage, albeit a very important part; and each of the primary bullets will be links to a full range of options, where the secondary bullets are the most popular of those.)

We will follow up soon with a similar post about the site-wide navigation bar, which will contain other links, but for now we would like to focus on the main page links.

Please share you thoughts, and thanks for your time.

Adrian

One of the topics of conversation was the importance of reliable and relevant search results. There are a lot of processes already in the works to help in this regard, and ITS has been asking for input on the search tool. If you have an idea as to how the search could be improved, a feedback form is accessible from the search page, http://www.wesleyan.edu/search.

Other topics discussed were the types of dynamic news headlines and other content that prospective students care about by highlighting student/faculty collaborations, research opportunities, and alumni achievements in their fields. We discussed their thoughts on having video on the homepage, and the need to update some of the constituency-based pages that currently are lists of links. We talked about drop-down menus and other navigation schemes, the calendar, clutter vs. airiness, the impact of the beltway feature, user-generated content sharing, and the use of large images.

Finally, we looked at some other universities’ websites that had impressed some of those present during their college searches. All in all it was a very good meeting, with a lot of sharing of ideas and we appreciate the time those present dedicated during midterm week to help share their perspective on the current Wesleyan website.

If you are a student and could not attend the meeting, what are some of your thoughts on the current website? What sorts of features or types of content do you think are most important for Wesleyan to appeal to future students? What could we add or remove from the homepage or secondary pages?