ITS Web Services

Note: I would have liked to have posted this earlier today, but after having to rush of to the airport, wade through the security mire, and travel for seven hours, I’m just now getting to it.

So on our last morning in Austin, Billy and I both opted to attend this core conversation (as led by Richard Wood, Admissions and Student Orientation Coordinator at the University of Nevada, Reno) that explored issues that we in the higher education web world deal with on a daily basis: How to achieve some order, branding, or any common elements to establish a cohesive look and feel across a multitude of disparate sites with different audiences, messages and goals? There were about 35 people attending this discussion, most from higher-education with a few consulting groups who specialize in helping academic institutions redefine their Web presence.

The general consensus at the outset of the conversation was that universities simply can’t lay down branding laws in the same way commercial businesses can. As the conversation evolved, however, we saw that come schools are having some success in this area, but that even those have a long way to go.

Some other random thoughts that may be of interest:

• University of Nebraska Lincoln is doing a pretty good job of maintaining a consistent look ad feel. They provide a style guide, a wiki/forum for discussing branding and consistency.
• University of Florida provides templates that help to tie secondary and tertiary pages together.
• Univ. of Nevada once had minimum requirements: header (with university logo), and footer.
• How does one go about getting buy in from all the disparate groups within a university?
• One thing the admissions for Univ. Nevada has done is to bypass the main university site (by publishing their direct URL), and made all their marketing material match.
• Billy noted that another challenge is finding a balance between all the different audiences coming to a university site, whereas in the corporate world you more or less know your audience – it’s a part of your business model.
• You have to have the tools in place (style guide, policies, templates, etc.) before you can “lay down the law” and develop a sense of consistency.
• One method: make the main site (e.g. unc.edu) for a specific audience (students and alumni), and let departments have some freedom but with common elements – header, footer, logo, colors, etc.
• If a university’s letterhead, business cards, etc. are required to match, shouldn’t the Web pages?
• Can a centralized tool or CMS help address some, most, all or none of these problems? No: The CMS is the tool by which the polices are implemented that achieve the branding.
• One question I think should have been asked right off the bat, “Should it? (and if so, why?)”
• Our department (ITS) has another problem to solve which is centered around the fact that we are not the authority on matters of branding. We rely on another group for this information.
• Once the rules, polices and tools are in place, you need to enforce them.
• Focus groups, Web site metrics, user testing: all good tools for making the case for branding and shifting from a site that mirrors an organizational chart to one that presents the services the audience is seeking. Redesigning the Finance Division site provided a sneak peek of some of the challenges we are likely to face in making that cultural shift across the University.

:: Andy Smith