Embarking on a redesign of www.newpaltz.edu

Later this year we will be redesigning the main SUNY New Paltz site, www.newpaltz.edu. This will be the sixth design for the college’s Web site since its initial launch in 1995.

We know some people don’t like change, but change can be good. This change will be extremely good. Web development, design and technology have advanced quite a bit since our last redesign launch in 2005. We’ve also learned a lot more about our institution, the people who use our Web site, and how they use our site.

Most importantly, as a member of the Brand Marketing Taskforce, we’ve been working with two outside firms to do market research, analysis and a creative branding campaign. We’re nearing the end of that process, which means the beginning of the exciting new phase — implementation.

Our Web site is the most public face of the university. We’re excited to have its new design reflect the research that has been done, and the new campaign that has emerged from its findings.

Here’s how we’re going to approach this:

• Lyudmila, Matt and I started weekly Web Redesign Strategy planning meetings in early February. In these meetings we’ve been outlining all the steps involved in this process, which include:
  • Reviewing our Web statistics via our Google Analytics account. This is an enormous project in it of itself, as none of us are GA experts, and there’s a lot to it.
  • Reviewing statistical reports from our Google Mini Search appliance, which runs our “Google search” feature in the upper right corner of every page.
  • Creating and administering a survey collecting information about how our site is working (or not) for people, and collect info that will help us better plan future projects. We have submitted a draft of our survey to Institutional Research, tested it with a small group last week, and will be making revisions and then sending out to our seven key audiences later this month. These groups are: accepted students, current students, faculty/staff, donors/community members/friends of the college, media, parents of students, and alumni.
  • Creating a schedule that will determine how many phases will be involved in this redesign, which sites will be included in each phase, and a rough timeframe for each phase. Phase 1 will include the home page (www.newpaltz.edu) and the top level pages (About New Paltz, Academics, etc.) that are linked from the home page. We haven’t yet decided how much deeper Phase 1 will be able to be, practically speaking. Future phases will include implementing the new design template to all division, school, department and program pages throughout the university, as well as logins to external services such as Blackboard, Zimbra, NPmail, etc.
• Once we’re armed with all of this data and had a chance to thoroughly understand it all, we’re going to make a list of what features will be added, removed, or changed on the home page. This final list of elements will be given to the outside firm we are working with, for them to design a sample home page implementation using the new creative concept they have developed for all materials.
• We will then take this suggestion, determine whether we will use it, modify it, or work on our own design samples in-house.
• When we have a couple of strong design mock-ups, we will be sharing them with focus groups from our six key audiences.
• As we get closer to a final product, we will do usability testing, and likely use the Silverback product that was recently recommended to me.

There will likely be additional steps along the way that I have not outlined here yet, but this gives you a rough idea of the process involved in this project.

This is an ambitious schedule, especially given the fact that this is a very complex, time consuming project on top of our already high volume of standard projects and updates that need to continue simultaneously. If all goes as planned, our hope is to launch phase 1 of the redesign by the end of August.

Bear with us. We’ll be asking for a lot of help and input, and sometimes may involve patience and humor. Thanks in advance!