College’s website undergoes design

College keeps up with increasing changes by revamping its website

By Valerie Velikaya

As many students may have noticed, the college’s website has undergone a transformation.

The current website, unveiled on Mon­day, Feb. 23, was met with bigger, bolder headlines, better imagery as well as a re­sponsive design.

“Instead of having a separate website for desktop computer and a separate one for mobile device,” said Vincent Miller, Director of the Educational Technol­ogy Center. “They just have one design, which will work across any size screen.”

The content was inventoried and the amount of webpages was decreased, con­densing information to a simpler, easy-to-find format.

“I think that the most noticeable fea­ture is the bold photos and imagery and it ties so cleanly to the [college] identity. Our brand — the fresh liveliness of our campus,” said Interim Executive Director Christy McWard. “I think that the new style of the website just reflects who we are as a college.”

The website greets the viewer with programs, events and students.

“When we went about redoing the website, our focus was really on making it focus on what the students wanted to see and to make it easy for them to navi­gate,” said Karen Davis, manager of com­munication.

After the idea was first proposed ap­proximately two years ago by Julie Haas, the associate vice president of marketing communications, numerous tests have been conducted, using various groups of students to identify flaws and strengths of the old website and applying it to the newer version.

One of these strengths includes clean­er navigation. The Mega Menu is one of the key features, which allows a user to select content from a drop-down menu containing the main topic with subtopics underneath.

“An example is if you scan across the admissions area, you will see that there’s where you get information to apply, to enroll, to do the testing, to get financial, aid [and] pay tuition,” said Davis. “It’s all kind of there for you to easily see how to get to the steps that you might be looking for.”

The design was a compilation effort, and the final cut was created by a con­sultation company who brought forth recommendations, as well as the college’s staff and the college’s IT developer.

“This has just been an enormous effort that has taken, like we said, just under two years, but it’s been a great example of collaboration across our campus, be­tween many departments … it’s just been a great collaborative effort on the part of many staff here at [the college],” said Mc­Ward.