Web Committee April 12 meeting

The Web Advisory Committee met for the second time on April 12, 2006 to hear reports on progress made on several subcommittees including:

Benchmarking: This committee is charged with surveying peer institutions and making recommendation on some of the best design and linguistic practices. Jason Maners reported that the group looked at 16 peer universities of NC State as well as the ACC member schools.

Layout and Design
-Most peer universities used a similar layout consisting of a common header, a feature splash, and two or three columns of useful information.
-Navigation elements were located either directly below the header, on the lefthand side of the page, or both.
-Key elements like search boxes were readily available and highly visible.
-Feature splashes were a critical element .. large images with detailed stories highlighting accomplishments monopolized the front page. Features were typically auto-rotating with 15-20 splashes and appeared to be totally changed out on a rotating basis.
-Several universities offered two main/home pages ... one geared toward external audiences and one geared toward internal audiences.
-The second homepage was often a portal system.
-Second tier pages kept a similar feel to the home page but typically lost the feature splash.
-Several sites offered heightened levels of interaction such as virtual tours of campus, Web cams of campus spots, and highly interactive menu systems.

Navigation
-Most sites divide navigation into two main groups, audience (internal and external) and subject.
-Links that seemed to be popular or favorites among site visitors and links to special areas such as campus calendar, colleges/schools, etc. tend to have specially designed links/graphical elements to draw a user's attention.
-Most second tier page sites focused on a few key areas and linked to a larger A-Z listing.

Technology
-Most used technologies were a Web-based event calendaring system and the use of RSS feeds for news and site updates.

Suggestions
-Feature splash with large images highlighting stories around the university
-Event calendar including events ranging from athletics, arts & crafts, seminars, etc.
-Portal type access
-Second tier pages that avoid long list of links


Communications Subcommittee: This group is charged with communicating the on-going redesign process and a roll-out strategy. Tilla Fearn reported initial activities are targeted to internal audiences.

Web site – http://www.ncsu.edu.redesign is where news about the redesign project will reside.
A Powerpoint presentation will be developed and presented to important university groups to provide information and gain input about the project. Potential groups are Executive Officers, University Council, Faculty, Staff and Student Senates, Dean's Council, University Advancement, Campus PR Group, and IT/Web developers
Additional publicity will be sought through items in campus publications, including Bulletin, Technician, The Nubian Voice, WKNC, NC State Alumni Magazine, Results, etc.
-Colleges and units will be encouraged to use materials in their newsletters.

Several Possible Post-Launch Activities were considered including giveaways, open house, direct mail.

Analytics Subcommittee: This committee will analyze data and usage patterns and monitor pre and post-implementation usage. Michael Rappa reported that the committee has completed the following:
-Analyzed log data from ncsu.edu using Urchin software and will consider using Google Analytics in the future.
-totals are 104,000 sessions a day but this probably represents 25,000-30,000 >real people=
-Home page is hit most often
-Next most popular page is student=s page

Additional analysis is ongoing.

Technology Subcommittee: This group is looking at how new technologies could be integrated into the main site. Harry Nicholos reported the following discussions:
-Use of Contribute as an overlay Content Management System and will investigate Contribute Publish Server
-Recommended that a university-wide event calendaring system be acquired. (This has already been pursued by Public Affairs.)

Other discussion:
Jason Simon reported:
-RFP has been prepared for a Web consultant; proposals due April 17; received over 65 questions from vendors
-Vendor will work with committee and subcommittees