June 10, 2008 issue
EMU Web site in midst of redesign

By Amy E. Whitesall

 

Eastern Michigan University's Web site is the face it presents to the world, and that face is getting old.

By Web standards, EMU's four-year-old Web site is solidly middle-aged. For potential students in their teens and early 20s, it's not much of a come-on.

"We're responsible for a very big part of the university's image," said Rhonda Delong, EMU's director of Web communications and new media. "People don't like to hear this, but if you have a department Web site that's behind the times, people are going to think your pedagogy's behind the times. And then people vote with their feet."

A NEW LOOK: Eastern Michigan University's new home page design will look similar to this and will roll out this fall.

With prospective students in mind and existing users close behind, DeLong and her newly-assembled staff (Web creative manager Suzanne Szopo and Web developer Scott Shaper) have set out to build EMU a Web presence that raises the bar for university Web sites. They plan to launch the first phase — which will include the University's home page and many of its major sub-pages — this fall.

After months of researching university sites and other sites, gleaning best practices and cool innovations, and developing ideas of their own, DeLong is convinced there's no reason EMU's team can't jump ahead of the curve and give its community a very dynamic, interactive, easy-to-use site.

"The Web gives us an opportunity to lead in ways that transcend what people think of Eastern as being," DeLong said. "If we get to where we want to be, we won't be following the tide; we'll be leading it."

In their quest to be all things to all people, university Web sites often wind up with crowded, confusing home pages. EMU's new design, DeLong said, will have a simpler home page that acts as a gateway. That'll lead to pages tailored to specific audiences and arranged in a way that, hopefully, makes those pages easier to locate and navigate.  

This spring, the department asked the university community for feedback on four sample designs. More than 1,500 students, faculty and staff responded, and an overwhelming majority preferred one that highlights interactive features like video and podcasts. Most provided written comments, giving DeLong's team lots of direction and feedback — though they're always open to more.

"Every time you turn around, there's an innovation on the Web," said Szopo. "It all comes back to your user group. You really have to think about what they want."

The redesign also will clean up some behind-the-scenes remnants of Web practices that have since been replaced or improved. It'll use Web standards designed to make things work more cleanly and efficiently, resulting in pages that look better, load faster, and are still engaging and useful for users with disabilities or who use low-speed connections or mobile devices.

To make updates easier and keep users from accidentally making changes that break the site, DeLong said the department is seeking to acquire a university-wide content management system, which may cost up to $100,000. A content management system is an application that lets people update information on their Web pages with no more technical expertise than it takes to use Microsoft Word.

"It's kind of ridiculous that we're sitting here in 2008 without a CMS. This is the way professional web sites are maintained and developed at medium- to large-size organizations. There are several products out there now that have hit the sweet spot for education — as opposed to something for a giant corporation," DeLong said. "If I try to implement a new site but it's still hard to maintain and doesn't work right, people won't be any less frustrated when they're creating pages. Let's make their work easier and better, and then we'll get buy-in."

Eastern Michigan staff currently use Dreamweaver, a professional Web development program, to edit content on department pages. But using this tool to manage basic content is a little like using a Louisville Slugger to swat a fly.

"One of the problems with what we've been doing is it breaks down at a certain level. What I want is for people, throughout the whole Web site, to have a very robust experience of what the university is."

DeLong and her staff also are looking at features that will make the site a more fun, useful, engaging place to be. Some possibilities include ways to use things like YouTube, avatars and more interactive virtual tours. Users will be able to customize certain features relative to the way the page appears on their screen. Don't like that color scheme? How about a darker shade of green?

The new, modular design will make the new site more nimble and adaptable, so DeLong and her staff can seamlessly add features. Eventually, it could make redesigns as obsolete as the old web-development cycle (Launch a site. Let it grow old. Redesign it. Launch again) gives way to a more consistent evolution where new dynamic elements are always being created and added.

"We want visitors to find additional value on the site that they didn't expect, and to feel like they're able to drive their experience," DeLong said. "Maybe they're looking for a nursing school, but they also find out about other health-related professional opportunities, networks, career paths, or other valuable information and connections. In a case where EMU might have similar programs to its competitors, the question becomes, 'Why Eastern? Why nowhere else?' The Web site has to be a part of helping people find the answer to that question."