Utah State University Releases New; Updated Website

In Internet years, Utah State University’s last version of usu.edu had lived a long and full life of almost five years. Utah State’s revamped website went live on July 8.

The current iteration is the product of research, website analysis and lots of work with USU’s IT Programming and Design (PAD) team, said USU’s webmaster Ben Renard-Wiart.

Renard-Wiart had three main goals. First, he wanted to make a fully responsive website, one that could render in real time on every device. The new website is now fully accessible by phone and tablet without losing any of the functionality offered on a desktop computer. This is made possible by a widely adopted framework (CSS) called bootstrap, which is both powerful and has been successfully implemented at several other larger universities. After working with university IT and regional campuses, he decided it was best approach to quickly move to responsive website technology. Second, he updated the look and feel of the site. The new design layout offers a wider, more image-friendly experience for users. Finally, the website’s navigation underwent scrutiny to make high-traffic pages more accessible and to bring university stories and information to the forefront.

“My hope is that the website’s cross-platform accessibility, sleeker design and more intuitive navigation creates a much better user experience when visiting the university website,” he said.

Changes to the home page include a new top navigation-bar sorted by types of information rather than by audience, as it was in the past. The navigation bar now reads: About, Admission, Academics, Campus Life, Research, Campuses and Extension. The popular “Find a Degree” function is still featured at the top of the home page, while the rest of the content area is used for stories, spotlights and events happening at the university. The area will also have more space for the university’s web content producers to highlight upcoming events, publications and more.

About 200 incoming students were polled prior to determining the new layout of the home page top navigation-bar. Students were asked to order what they thought were the most important tasks when navigating a university website. When labeled one through five, one being the most important, the order was consistently: Tuition/Fees/Scholarships, Degrees, Housing, Calendar/Deadlines, Student Life/ Location. Those items can now be easily found on the drop down menus of the top navigation-bar. Students were also asked to organize labeled tiles into categories to determine menu navigation.

“We have made a lot of changes but that’s not to say that we won’t make more,” said Renard-Wiart. “The website is alive and we will continue to change it to better suit out needs as time dictates.”

The new design will also play a part in transitioning other USU administrative websites to adopt the style in an effort to create a more coherent online experience.

“Regional Campuses, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business and the College of Engineering have adopted the new style with minor modifications and we’re expecting more to adopt it in the near future,” said Renard-Wiart. “The template has been made available for use on OU Campus web content management system (CMS).”

See the new Utah State University website.

Writer: Jackson Murphy, jackson.murphy@usu.edu