It’s heeeere!
Okay so… It’s been a long time coming…
TLDR: I’ve spent two years (the entire time I’ve been at my job) working on this website redesign… and it just launched!!
The longer version: So, I got hired in March 2020 – literally right as the panini was starting up – to work on this website redesign. For reference, the old website looked a little like this:
I hate it. I’ve hated it the entire time I’ve known about it… and I went to college here (2012-2019). I’m glad it’s gone. I actually brought it up in my interview how much I hated this stupid website. It’s so outdated and it was really kind of misused. Essentially, the website acted as a giant digital filing cabinet for everyone on campus.
Not really what a university website is supposed to be. The new one is so much better. I’m so happy I got to be a part of it.
There’s a couple of things I want to say on it:
If you think of universities as an industry, the common structure of university websites is much different from those outside of the industry. What I mean by this is that we have one main site: Louisiana.edu and several (hundreds) of subsites: liberalarts.louisiana.edu, civil.louisiana.edu, it.louisiana.edu, etc.
The main site is pretty massive and alone it took two years to build (more to plan & organize & fund). All of the subsites are still on the old design and some of them are going to be a while until they get updated. They are in the works, though. It’s just a process.The new site isn’t just about updating the design. Don’t get me wrong, the new design is huge. But we went through the whole thing and updated all of the content with a new goal in mind. The new site is much more marketing-centered. We have a deliberately defined target audience that has determined the content of the site as well as user experience. It’s super exciting seeing such an upgrade and being part of it.
For a long time, my role while working on the website was Web Content Writer. I have since been promoted to Web Content Strategist and taken on a lot more than just writing. But for a long time, I was mostly just writing for the site.
I had a large focus on the program pages. For these, there was a lot of coordinating between our office and the many departments and colleges across campus. We wrote and built a one-page marketing pitch for each academic program offered at our university based on what incoming students wanted to know about them.
Not only is it a much better experience overall, but it’s super easy to see all of the programs and compare them if the student is undecided.
It was so much work. We have almost 100 pages dedicated to the undergraduate programs.One of the things that our target audience wanted was more student input. Not surprising. This is the equivalent to customers wanting more reviews and whatnot. Don’t just tell them “We’re awesome and this is why” but showcase what the actual people say who have been through it. It’s a sound strategy and not too different from other industries.
But it was a lot of work. 🥵 We interviewed so many people and wrote spotlights on a good chunk of them. I actually got my first by-line published because of one of these spotlights being pushed before the website redesign launch … 2 years before – almost to the day. We wrote so many spotlights on students and alumni from every program we offer.We actually have over 240 programs offered at the University, but we really focused in on the undergraduate programs, which cuts that number down significantly. Grad school is one of the first subsites that we’re going to focus on switching over to the new design. Talk about job security. 😜
Well, that’s about all I can think to say about it for now. Take a look at the site if you’re curious what I’ve been doing with my life the past two years…. Other than having a baby. 😂