The MarCom team at BUSSW is managing a website redesign in partnership with BU’s Interactive Design (ID) team.
With the support of Dean Barbara Jones, we have begun a much needed overhaul of our website to improve its functionality, flexibility, navigation and dynamic content. Our current site has over 400 pages which accounts for the long term nature of the project.
Our school website is integral to the functioning of every department and impacts every faculty and staff member, regardless of job title. Our website is the most important communications channel we have—no brochure, banner, or advertising campaign has the same impact on so many of our target audiences. It is essentially the first “building” a prospective student, employee or peer “walks” into.
Below please find helpful information for the project:
- Websites for colleges need to have content geared toward several target audiences, each with diverse needs and unique pain points, in a thoughtful, effective and visitor-friendly format. The key ingredients are: thoughtful & simple navigation; robust search functionality; mobile responsiveness; calls to action (CTAs); prioritization of the most important content; and accessibility. To conduct this project, we will need participation and support from many in our community over the next year.
- If we think about this project as moving into a new home, it may be helpful – we need to clean out our current home, reassess what is necessary to bring with us, and be thoughtful and strategic about what we install in our new home.
- We will be in touch throughout the project to provide updates to the larger community at key milestones and with specific asks for departments and teams. Colleagues at other BU schools have shared helpful tips for communication/organization for their redesign projects and we will utilize those to make this as smooth as possible. It will require work from some content owners and depts., including assessing “owned” pages and helping us improve navigation to necessary content. We will do our best to provide advance notice so all teams can plan their workload accordingly.
Phase 1
Intake
- Objectives
- Budget
Strategy
- Content, Data, Search Engine Optimization Audits
- Stakeholder discussions
- Findings/Rec
Planning
- Sitemap
- Wireframes
- Style boards
- Scope for Design & Implementation
Phase 2
Design
- Mockups
- Content Planning
Development
- Front End, Back End Development
- Analytics/SEO Implementation
- Theme Training
Launch
- Quality Assurance
- Client Review
- Site Launch
- Post-Launch Support
Phase 2 will include content planning which will require the most intensive work from our team and our school.
We are asking all depts. that have content contributors to please make this a priority in the coming months so we can stay on schedule with the project.
If you have questions related to the redesign project, please reach out to us via email at ssw-marcom@bu.edu.
Thanks in advance for your collaboration and support!
The MarCom Team