by Mark McGowan
After a little more than a year since NIU launched its Web Presence Project, 100 clients have transformed their Internet homes.
Students’ Legal Assistance holds the No. 100 distinction; more than two dozen other centers, departments and offices are in the pipeline to become part of NIU’s Web presence, which created a new online design and structure and strongly encourages uniformity across campus.
Leaders of the Web Team, housed in the NIU Office of Public Affairs, are proud of the tremendous response: Although any academic or administrative department, SA-recognized student organization or faculty/staff member can use the templates, they are not mandatory.
“University Web presence is by far the most important aspect of institutional branding in today’s media mix,” said Melanie Magara, assistant vice president for public affairs and chair of NIU’s Web Presence committee. “It provides a visual and thematic umbrella for both university- and unit-level communications while projecting the unique personality that differentiates NIU from other institutions.”
As a practical matter, the formation of NIU’s Web Presence team provides one-stop assistance with every aspect of Web site creation and maintenance: graphic design, navigation architecture, accessibility training and content management.
“The project been such a success because it’s enabled departments to re-evaluate and refine the content on their Web sites, independent of the design,” said Jennice O’Brien, assistant director for Web communications.
“We work with our clients to educate them on the users’ experience on the NIU Web site,” O’Brien added. “They come to understand that they need to look at their sites from the users’ perspective, and that includes making sure the content is written specifically for the Web and updated often. Navigation needs to be intuitive, and shouldn’t give users pause or leave them feeling lost.”
In addition to consultations with Web Presence clients, the Web Team also provides services such as content migration, image creation, usability testing, training and support.
“People really want to get on board with the templates,” said Rachel Turner, assistant director for creative services. “They want a current and consistent NIU look.”
The goal of the Web Presence Project is to create a unified, sustainable presence for the Web sites covered by the scope of the project and to support other administrative and academic departments that wish to participate.
Work began as a collaborative endeavor between Enrollment Services and the Division of Outreach and Administration, which include the following departments and the Web sites that they oversee: Admissions, Information Technology Services, Outreach, Public Affairs, Registration and Records and Student Financial Aid.
Among the many benefits are improved accessibility, including a heightened awareness of Illinois accessibility laws, and usability, which creates a shorter learning curve for users.
Every site features the same navigation tools and the same colors. All sites also include the bowed banner artwork, either photographs shot especially for the Web by Media Services or collages of images created for those spaces.
Content, meanwhile, becomes reorganized, refocused and refreshed. Technical and design support from the Web Team allows clients to put greater attention on their content.
The pages also now display well on small devices such as Blackberry, Treo and the iPhone, said Katy Whitelaw, Web specialist.
“The Web Presence templates were designed to work for visitors using various devices to view our pages, from screen readers to small devices like Internet-enabled phones. Sites that use the templates also look interesting and inviting on a typical computer screen,” Whitelaw said.
“The templates have successfully combined accessibility and usability with NIU branding, a crisp up-to-date look and photos that provide interest. Hopefully, prospective students see someone like themselves in the photos and say, ‘Hey, that looks like me. I should be there.’ ”
Clients are enjoying their new sites, which allow plenty of flexibility and the ease of making their own updates.
Brandi Hephner LaBanc, assistant vice president for planning and operations in the Division of Student Affairs, said her division had a couple good reasons for moving to the new templates.
“Prior to the templates, the Web site just didn’t have a thematic branding, and I think we needed that. You would jump around our site, and you wouldn’t know if you were still connected to the NIU Web site. That was really critical,” LaBanc said.
“We also needed to be a role model for our division,” she added. “The majority of our departments have committed, although we didn’t require them.”
LaBanc is impressed with the permission to add personal touches – Web templates on other campuses often have limits, she said – and the friendly competition stirred among campus units to build the best site within the templates.
“The Campus Child Care Center’s site just draws you in with all the photos of the kids. Housing and Dining is a large site, and they’ve enjoyed adding design elements. It’s been a fun process,” La Banc said.
“When I think back to when we initiated the process, it was pretty daunting,” she added. “The thing that really impressed me was that the Web Team just made it happen. They were very supportive and frankly, when I thought about the task they had, I didn’t think they’d be there the way they were. But the template was ready, and they made it attractive. It was a very smooth process.”
For the College of Health and Human Sciences, coming on board had a greater significance.
“We needed to update our Web site because of our realignment,” Associate Dean Mary Pritchard said, referring to the recent mergers of several schools and departments into two new schools. “That was really critical, and the Web Team was just wonderful. We also needed to have the new information posted for an accreditation visit, and they were very responsive helping us get that together.”
A few tweaks are still forthcoming, Pritchard said, but the early response is positive.
“People really like the look of it and the ease of getting around,” she said. “The main NIU Web site is very navigable. I really like the student and the faculty-staff sections.”
Behind the scenes stand Dan Ihm, manager of Campus Web Services in ITS, and his five IT specialists.
“The Web Team will define the site structure for users, which will be optimized for usability and accessibility, and they’ll pass that on to us,” Ihm said. “We create the site in (NIU content management system) WebCRMA, as well as the permissions, the authors and the reviewers, and we set up a structure of the site for them, including the left navigation and some sample pages. It’s the first step so they can get started on their sites right away.”
Although the workload over the past 14 months is enough to indicate the level of success to Ihm, he said he can recognize it for himself as a member of the NIU community.
“It’s really made a major impact, and it’s a huge improvement from what we had before,” he said. “It’s just caught on like wildfire.”
Coming soon: a new, more robust content management system (CMS) and a continued exploration of template design.
“The new CMS will allow us to reuse content across the Web site and make maintenance even easier,” O’Brien said. “We’ll also look into how we can further update the design of our templates. That needs to continue to evolve.”