Interview with Nancy Prater About BSU.edu Relaunch

MUNCIE, Ind. - Nancy Prater, University Web Coordinator at Ball State University was nice enough to answer some questions via email about the recent relaunch of the Ball State website.

How long did the process take?

We began the process in April 2006 - so about a year and a half.

How much planning went into it before-hand? (Needs assessment, etc...)

A great deal of planning went into the relaunch effort. We knew we
needed to redesign and rearchitect the site 1) to make it more
user-friendly and 2) to support our university's strategic (www.bsu.edu/strategicplan) and marketing goals.

During the relaunch process we had several key touchpoints with
audiences internal (including students, faculty, staff) and external
(such as prospective students, parents, alumni) audiences to gauge
their preferences for design, messages and ease-of-use. These
touchpoints included focus groups, usability tests, and online surveys.

Was it difficult meeting the needs of so many different schools and departments?

Without a doubt. But, our focus was always first on our audiences.
If we are serving our audiences well, then we are meeting the critical
needs of our colleges and departments.

How many people were on the team?

This one does not have a simple answer, because there were probably
more than 100 people across campus involved in writing, copyediting,
taking photographs, submitting ideas, etc..., but here is the breakdown
of the full-time staff most involved with the day-to-day aspects of the
project: 4 from University Marketing and Communications, 2 from
University Computing Services (IT), and about 7 people from mStoner (www.mstoner.com), our consultants on the project.

I like that you call it a re-launch rather than a re-design. Can you explain the difference between the two for our readers?

Sure. I think this is an important distinction, too. The big
difference is that a redesign implies a simple facelift of how the site
looks. However, ours was more than just a facelift - it really was an
"extreme makeover." The site now has a fully planned information
architecture, which is just a fancy word for site outline or plan. This
may seem like a minor thing, but Ball State's Web site was like a lot
of Web sites of large universities - it grew organically over the
years, with no real plan for growth. That has all changed.

What are the main highlights (changes) for the re-launch?

Well, of course it looks different. It has a fresher, cleaner, more
modern look that reflects where we are today as a top-quality
university and where we are heading. There are also new or re-tooled
sections (About, Campus Life, Admissions, and Academics) that speak to
our prospective students, parents, and others who may not know much
about Ball State. And, number one, the site is easier to navigate.

We are a sizeable institutions with a lot of divisions and a lot of
activity going on every day. Making it easy to navigate was our goal
all along and our pre-launch testing indicated we were on the right
path and our post-launch feedback has been great. Of course, it is a
Web site, so the testing, tweaking, testing, tweaking, will be an
ongoing process from here on out.

What was the tipping point for you to choose Sitecore as the CMS?

That is a good question. There were so many factors that pointed to
Sitecore as a good solution for us, that it may be impossible to pick
just one thing. However, here are some of the top reasons for the
choice:

• The interface for Web editors is intutitive and user friendly. The
  Sitecore interface mimics Microsoft Office 2007, which many on our
  campus are using or will be using within a few months.
• Sitecore offers better support for the Mac. About 25 percent of
  our students, faculty, and staff use Macs. For whatever reason, not
  many CMS vendors support Macs - or at least as well as they do PCs.
• Sitecore offers a better fit with the technology infrastructure at
  Ball State. What I mean by this is that the programmers within
  University Computing Services are knowledgeable about a programming
  environment known as Microsoft .NET. Sitecore has been built from the
  ground up with .NET. This offers tremendous potential in that so many
  of the programmers building web applications (or services that we can
  access via the Web to do our jobs) can integrate these services more
  easily to the Ball State Web site. A more integrated Web experience
  will ultimately be beneficial to all of our internal and external site
  visitors.

What kind of traffic does the bsu.edu site get?

The Ball State site averages more than 11 million visits per month. The home page itself averages about 2 million.

Is there a sense of pride at working for a domain that has been around since the 80s?

Is there ever! I am thankful everyday that I am doing what I do at
an organization like Ball State that has such a rich tradition in
embracing technology. When I attend conferences and talk with peers
from other universities who do similar work that I do, I am amazed at
how advanced we are.

We were one of the first universities to embrace content management
and have taken it farther than any other university I have came across.
(mStoner, our consultants who work with many institutions across the
country, have told us the same thing.) We have about 600 editors across
campus using our old CMS (and will be migrated to the new one) and more
than 220 university sites within that system.

Most institutions our size or larger have not implemented a CMS to
this extent. In fact, sometimes this is a disadvantge because we are
more on our own figuring out solutions to issues other institutions
haven't encountered yet.

Another great thing is that we have an amazing IT department that is
visionary, yet practical in its approach. They have been true partners
in our efforts. I'm afraid that a good working relationship between IT
and marketing/communications is not always the norm in universities.

What's next for you at BSU?

Well, the relaunch you see is actually only Phase 1. We still have
about 220 accounts in our old CMS that need to be migrated to our new
system. However, this is an opportunity to update and re-tool many of
those sites. This is going to keep us busy for many, many months to
come.

Thanks again to Nancy Prater for taking the time to answer some
questions about the relaunch.

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