Due to unexpected staffing changes, as well as a longer-than expected time to complete our new brand identity system with our consulting firm, this project had been stalled for the last six months. We now have our vacancy filled and our brand identity system is just about complete, so we’re ready to move forward.

Below is a (long overdue) recap of what we learned from the survey we administered last April/May (2009) to current students, accepted students, faculty/staff, alumni, donors, and media. We had nearly 700 responses, and 41% reported being between 18-21 years old.

• The majority of respondents rated our content, navigation, organization of information and overall usability as excellent/above average. Some of the specific comments we were able to address, or were related to issues with our Google Mini Search appliance, and we’ve either corrected or are in the process of working on.
• The quality of the current visual design, which is largely five years old, was primarily rated in the ‘average’ category.
• 80% of the respondents reported they generally find the information they are seeking on the SUNY New Paltz home page. 65% reported the categories and links allow them to find what they’re looking for.
• A surprise to us was to learn that our search engine, powered by the Google Mini Search Appliance, was not working well for our respondents. We addressed some of these issues right away last summer, some additional changes were made in recent weeks, and we’re working on a larger piece of the project we hope to complete later this spring.
• Also a surprise, due to recent articles and studies I’ve personally read, the most important feature on our home page to our respondents is our audience-based navigation (i.e. resources for current students, faculty/staff, alumni/friends/visitors, parents). Featured events and news were also noted as important.
• Of the 675 responses to the question about RSS feeds, only 7% knew what they were and reported subscribing to them.

Here are some other nuggets we learned from the extensive qualitative feedback we received.

• Many reported our pages of long links are overwhelming (Resources for Current Students, Academics, etc.)
• We asked an open ended question: What is the ONE thing, (or your highest priority), you would change about the current SUNY New Paltz home page (www.newpaltz.edu)? Overwhelmingly, the responses revolved around the design and layout of the navigation. This current site was created in 2004 and launched in January 2005, making it more than five years old. The Web has matured a great deal in these five years, so this is one of our highest priorities with our design refresh. Those who responded specifically mentioned they wished it were more aesthetically pleasing, had better menu/navigation management, and projected a higher end image for the College.
• Several current students responded with the idea that they would like to be able to customize the home page to store their more frequently accessed pages. I saw a sneak peek of another well-known university who is developing an enhancement like this to their home page, and my mind has been racing with that idea ever since.
• Quite a few current students said they were not a fan of our feature story area where we used to feature faculty, student and alumni profiles. We’ve since changed that (not because of this feedback) and are using it as more of a  feature story space with more regular updates. I’d be interested in revisiting this aspect of the home page since this change occurred last fall, after this original survey.
• A large number of students complained about the various systems they access – wishing they had single sign-on (SSO) access to them all. This was quite puzzling to us, because at the time of this survey, students could log in to our portal at http://my.newpaltz.edu and have SSO access to Blackboard and their e-mail server (npmail) from there. Last summer after some various upgrades, both stopped working, and due to resource issues they have not been restored at this point.
• When asked what the “ONE best feature about the current SUNY New Paltz home page is,” a large majority reported the organization of the information.

Next steps? We’re working on determining the exact resources that will be used, and are establishing a rough time line. More on that in a few weeks.

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!