New SIUE Site

New Design Concepts Unveiled! Feedback Requested...

2009-09-30T06:05:00.014-05:00

We are ready for your feedback! We have two concepts for you to review. Though the wireframes are similar, the designs are distinct. We are striving for a look that has components that can be refreshed easily and periodically, so that we can freshen our Web site more frequently as an ongoing process versus an event every 3-4 years. This is the "front door" to the University, so it is imperative that we communicate our brand, our main points of differentiation and the benefits of an education at SIUE to our audiences.

Both designs do a great job of accomplishing all of these objectives. In addition to displaying our great academic programs, we are also looking to reinforce that we are a residential campus (versus commuter of the past) and that there is indeed life and vibrancy on this campus.

We are making sure the home page is easy to use for all of our external audiences, as they are turning to the Web site to get their first impression of the University and to gather information about SIUE as they are looking to enroll, send their son or daughter to school, apply for a job opening, contribute time or treasure, or find events and activities on campus to attend. We will have a series of microsites that serve as the "home base" or starting point for our internal audiences: current students, faculty, staff, etc.

Please note that we have intentionally left most text and links blank so that at this stage we are focusing on the look and feel of the designs and not the words. Also, as these are posted as .jpg image files on this blog, they are not as crisp as they will be once the design is live on the site.

Concept A home page: This concept uses our school colors throughout the elements. Note that the photos are placeholders for now. When you mouse over the three buttons on the left, the images will change. There are also four images that will rotate with each button.

Concept A sample interior microsite page: Though we used the School of Engineering as a sample, this design could apply to all top level interior pages. Please note that we now have a consistent header design and navigation, as well as a footer, that will carry through all pages of the site. This way our visitors will know that they are at the SIUE site no matter where they are within the site, and they will be able to move between the areas of the site very easily without having to return to the home page. Ease of use and consistency are very important in the design of a Web site. Also, there is a second layer of top/header imagery and navigation. This can be customized to the area, so that the second set of links addresses the needs of the visitors to that particular site. There is also room on the right-hand side to display key pieces of information, news, etc.

Concept B home page: Though the overall wireframe is consistent with concept A, this design is very clean and incorporates blue and tan accent colors while still remaining consistent with our brand.

Concept B sample interior microsite page: Note again that we now have a consistent header design and navigation, as well as a footer, that will carry through all pages of the site. We used admissions as another sample of a top level interior page that would use this layout.

So please let us know what you think by leaving a comment on this post! If you like elements of one and some of the other, let us know that too. We can incorporate favorite elements of each into the design if need be.

Our goal is to incorporate the new design on our site by the end of the year. This step in collecting feedback is very important to us, so please chime in! We would like to have all feedback by Tuesday, October 6. Please identify your role at SIUE--IE student, staff, faculty, alumnus, etc.--as you post your feedback so we can make sure we are getting feedback from each of our audiences.

Thank you so much in advance for your participation!

Article in University Business: Does Branding Pay Off for Colleges? Harvard Thinks So.

2009-09-21T12:05:00.004-05:00

An interesting article ran in University Business on September 18, from the Fast Company blogger Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research at Movéo Integrated Branding. Reinforcing the need to differentiate SIUE from our competition, it is a very interesting discussion of branding as it relates to higher education. Here's a snippet and the link to the full story:

"It has taken a while for branding to seep into the world of higher education. Traditionally universities and colleges have not been staffed by professional marketers. There has been a revulsion toward the concept of Customers, in favor of Students. Education has been the mission; it was never about the Bottom Line. But due to increasing competition for private and state funding and the proliferation of school choices including for-profit and online learning options, colleges have been turning to branding and marketing as a tool to compete more effectively and drive enrollment and donations.
In the higher education arena, college branding efforts began to emerge and proliferate around 2000. Many of these programs involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, multi-faceted "stakeholder" market research, new names, logos and taglines.
Note that most institutional branding efforts still focus mainly on the external aspects of branding and not on organizational change and the holistic college experience. Unions, faculty independence, bureaucracy and lack of sophistication are reasons that traditional branding (logo) versus the newer age model (stakeholder beliefs and customer experience) is more entrenched."

Follow Up: Visitors to siue.edu From Other Countries

2009-09-14T17:10:00.003-05:00

A guest posted a question to the post on Visitor Traffic asking about visitors to the siue.edu site from other countries. Here is a very brief snapshot of the top ten countries from which we are receiving visitors in April and August of 2009. In addition to the total number of visitors (not unique), you can see the average number of pages they viewed per visit, the average time they spent on the site and the percent of the total visitors that were new to the site. Let us know if you have any questions!

A Guest Post From Duff Wrobbel

2009-09-14T09:49:00.004-05:00

I think it is very important that we keep in mind as we redevelop the SIUE Web site the results of the survey Duff Wrobbel conducted in August of our employees, asking what makes SIUE so special and differentiates us from our peers. So I am posting (with his permission) the results he sent out to all of us below. I'd love to hear from everyone how you think it is best to incorporate these points of differentiation in our new site design!

Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank the many of you who responded to my request (dated 11 August) asking you to tell me what is it that you believe makes SIUE special, what you think distinguishes us from our peer institutions, and what is it we do here that you are proudest of. As promised, here are my results. I received in excess of 140 discrete responses and these were sorted into naturally occurring categories. I am pleased to report that we seem to have a lot to be proud of. People frequently mentioned the beauty of our campus - both the natural and the architectural. Others mentioned the quality of our senior project, the relevance of our curriculum, our ability to manage and leverage resources, our overall openness to new ideas, and more than a dozen other things as well. However, the most common sources of pride indicated were the following:

About one in every 5 responses reflected in some way upon the quality of our relationships with one another - that as a faculty we are supportive, caring, and collegial, that we go above and beyond our job descriptions, and that we work together effectively across disciplinary boundaries;
Roughly the same number responded that they were proudest of our relationships with our students - that we are student-centered, deeply committed to student learning, that we respect our students, mentor them well, involve then in our research, and that we provide them with an experience much more like that of a small private institution.
About one in 8 mentioned our relationship with the region and the surrounding communities - that we work hard to attract a student population that mirrors our region, that we have a significant and positive impact on local communities, and that we are in touch with and address the needs of the metropolitan area.

In all, I must say I am pleased, if not at all surprised by these results. They seem quite consistent with another comment that occurred several times - that we are the area's "best-kept secret."

Thank you all for your responses!

An Interesting Article on Evaluating Web Sites Based on SEO Efforts, Not Design

2009-09-11T11:19:00.007-05:00

There is an interesting article titled "Best college Web sites named" on the HigerEdMorning.com Web site. Here's a snippet:

"Your school’s Web site may look terrific – but if it’s not coming up high in a list of search results, it’s not doing its job. Take a look at this list of colleges that are doing it right.

For any organization – higher ed or otherwise – the name of the game when it comes to Web sites is reaching the target market. And to do that, you need to be visible in the search engines.

Wordstream, Inc., ranked colleges according to search engine optimization, which they based on three factors: Root keywords, relevant modifiers and hostname frequency."

Read more...

There are certainly two important angles to approaches to site content and design: (1) text for search engine bots and crawlers, and (2) content and navigation for humans. I argue that both are very important. Though you want to be sure that you are ranking high in the organic search engine results for certain key phrases, you also have to recognize that humans are still reading your content and using your navigation, etc.

As we are developing the new design for the SIUE site, we are keeping both of these important factors in mind. We of course would love to hear your thoughts on these topics too!

Visitor Traffic to the siue.edu Site: The Outsiders are Watching!

2009-09-06T08:52:00.004-05:00

We track the visitors to our site in a variety of ways, but a notable statistic is the number of unique visitors to the site. That is, in a given month, the number of visitors counted only once so that a single visitor who navigates to our site multiple times is only counted once.

The other way we are able to further parse that data is to track which visitors are navigating to the site from our campus network, and which are considered external visitors off campus.

The interesting trend we can see from these pieces of data is that the vast majority (78% on average April - August 2009) of our visitors to the siue.edu home page are off campus, external guests! Certainly gives us something to think about as far as the target audience and subsequent design of the top layers of the site!

We need you!

2009-08-27T05:57:00.001-05:00

A lot has been happening at SIUE over the past few years. Educational excellence accolades, record enrollment, exciting Division I sports teams and campus expansion are just some of what we’ve seen happening around here. That got us to thinking… with all the exciting progress SIUE enjoys, our website could use an update too.

It’s not really something most people consider every day, the website, that is. But if you think about it, our website has a pretty long and important list of to-do’s.

It needs to inform and engage our current students.
It showcases our research, advancements and accolades.
It recognizes and praises our award winning faculty and staff and their accomplishments.
It connects our alumni with the campus and the institution as a whole.
It must welcome and ignite the interest in prospective students and their parents.
It joins our community and the entire St. Louis metro area, including friends and donors, outreach programs, mentoring from the professional community and leading job opportunities.

It’s no small task to accomplish all these things and more with one website. However, we know it can be done, and we’re excited to make it happen by creating a new look and feel as well as a more engaging presence to the university’s online space.

In taking the lid off our thinking about how to achieve our online goals, we realized we ought to approach the website in a whole new way. Instead of thinking of it as a static brochure that is web-enabled, we thought instead to create an experience for online visitors. Within that experience, we wanted to personify some of our best traits as an institution – and bring them to life on a new web environment with a simple, fresh design. Those traits include excellence, engagement, interactivity, warmth, openness and fun!

There are a lot of things our website can be, and many people it can serve. In addition to a vital communication medium, our website should represent each and every one of you who make up the fabric of SIUE – the personality, the quality, the diversity and the vibrancy that embody our community.

For this new website, we’re introducing a fresh set of ideas – and we need your help to make our online presence exceptional. We’d like your feedback in a variety of areas, including the following:

What information you find useful and important to you on the web
How you typically interact with the site – and what you wish it would do/show
Whether you would find it informative, interesting and easy to use as a prospective student
Because it’s so visual, what pictures and videos do you think tell the best stories

And possibly, the most important input to offer: what can help us grow and galvanize our community to best the very best institution we can be?

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we believe it takes a campus to create a website! In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be working collaboratively with you, the SIUE family, to launch the new web presence. We offer our sincere thanks in advance for all your help and support during this exciting time.

Elizabeth and the Marketing/Communications Team

Links to thought leaders on leveraging the Web to communicate

2009-08-26T10:48:00.002-05:00

Here are a few great blogs and sources of information as we are going through the redevelopment process. These are industry-leading folks who can talk about the importance of leveraging our Web site to communicate more effectively with our audiences.

David Meerman Scott's blog, Web Ink Now, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Mashable: Social Media News and Tips

A blog post on "stickiness" for Web sites

Inspiration for Campus Web Designers

We'd love to hear about other sites and blogs that you have found on the topic!

Welcome to the New SIUE Site Blog!

2009-08-26T09:45:00.000-05:00

This blog was developed to help communicate with our audiences and to facilitate feedback as we progress with a new SIUE Site redesign/redevelopment.

Communication is constantly changing and we are always exploring new and exciting ways to engage with our audiences. If you haven't noticed already we have been making ourselves known in what we consider to be the most widely known social media outlets; Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube and Flickr and we encourage your feedback and engagement.

During this initial SIUE Site Redesign/Redevelopment project we are asking for your input. What stands out to you about SIUE? What type of feeling does SIUE present to you?

As we mentioned above, we are always looking for ways to communicate with our audiences and this project is no different. We will be posting links from all our social media outlets to this blog so that we might get more feeback from you. Below is a list of our social networks so please connect with us (become our friend or fan) and join in on the conversation!

SIUE Facebook: ( facebook.com/siuedwardsville )
SIUE Twitter: ( twitter.com/siue )
SIUE Linkedin: ( linkedin.com; search groups for "siue")
SIUE Youtube: ( youtube.com/siueweb )

Other University Sites

2009-08-26T08:05:00.002-05:00

We looked at an exhaustive list of other college and university Web sites - many we liked and many we did not like. We also looked at various Web sites that organized a large quantity of information clearly, and were targeting similar audiences. Here are a few college and university sites we looked at, simply to see how they efficiently and clearly organized information. They are not necessarily peer institutions or competitors of ours.

Boston University

University of Denver

Vanderbilt University

Saint Louis University

Bowling Green State University

Ball State University

Bob Jones University

Have you found any that you particularly like? What attracts you to it?