GCSU.edu finally getting facelift

A redesign of the Georgia College & State University official Web site is in progress to provide a more welcoming environment to prospective faculty and students.

Director of University Communi-cations Mitch Clarke and Webmaster Barbara Monnett will be responsible for the design.

Clarke said the new design will be user-friendly for prospective students and their parents, as well as prospective faculty, staff, alumni and friends. He said the main purpose of the redesign is to recruit new students.

“It will be much more for people on the outside than inside,” said Clarke. “What we’re really building is a marketing sight. It’s a way to sell the university to the students.”

The redesign will be released during spring 2005. Although there is not currently a designated date for the release, Clarke said he hopes the site will be ready for public hearings in February and ready for release by late March or April.

“We call it a redesign, but it’s really like a whole new Web site,” said Monnett. “We’re trying to make the new site smaller [in] scale.”

Monnett and Clarke said they will focus on making the site more navigable.

The Web site will also convey a positive portrayal of the university, Clarke said.

“There will be student and faculty profiles,” said Clarke. “This is a very personal place with a lot of interaction, but you don’t really get that from our Web site.”

GC&SU’s official Web site has had the same general design with only moderate updates for more than four years, Monnett said.

Instructor and Director of Multimedia and Information Systems & Communications Caroline Collier also said that a main problem with the Web site is navigability.

“I think it’s just too difficult to find information right now,” said Collier. “It’s just difficult in the site map to see where the information is. We also don’t have a lot of consistency. I think the new design will bring us unity in the design and content.”

Clarke said new technology will also be used to enhance the Web site.

“We want to take advantage of some of the technology that’s out there,” said Clarke. “We want it to be highly interactive. One idea we’ve got is that we want students to be able to take a virtual tour [of the campus].”

Collier has served as a pagemaster for GC&SU’s business department for three years. She said she also believes technology will help to enhance the Web site.

“I think many of the new technologies are there to attract and make your Web site more dynamic,” said Collier. “We need to use new technology just to make the Web site more attractive.”

University Communications posted a site map on the GC&SU InfoPage, which was available until the beginning of this week, to solicit feedback from site visitors.

“The way we envision it is that it [the Web site] will never be ‘completed,’” said Clarke. “We want to build a site that we can continually update. We want to always be evolving.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 4 2005. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry