Website Improvement

My favorite quote is from Bob Johnson, a web consultant for higher ed. He says, “websites always eat but they never poop.” Well folks, our website needs an enema. Our bloated 30,000-page website will be streamlined to under 15,000 pages – that’s one page per student for easy figuring. Delete R.O.T. Now I have heard […]

President Kennedy signed the UND Web Policy on September 11, 2017. The content ownership and responsibilities governance model (see page 5) will be phased in during the launch waves.  All other sections of the policy are effective immediately.

As part of the website redevelopment initiative, mStoner and UND reviewed the current web environment and four areas were identified as needing new technology solutions. 1. Web Event Calendar UND uses an internally developed ‘custom’ event calendar on the current website. Stakeholders agreed during mStoner’s discovery phase that the calendar is an area that calls […]

We’d like your feedback on two home page design concepts. Please take the survey where you’ll view the two concepts and provide feedback on each. The confidential survey should take 5-10 minutes. Once you complete the survey, you’ll have the opportunity to provide your email address to be entered in a drawing for one of […]

The formal rollout plan for the website redevelopment project is final and includes four waves, with each wave having nine phases. Wave Assignments Many factors were used to determine the waves. Prospective student content received first priority. Internal content received last priority (with the exception of sites critical to the project). Sites currently not using […]

In the 20+ years since it first emerged, the UND website has grown organically with little oversight resulting in an unorganized and overloaded website. Our web redevelopment project will lay a new solid foundation, but governance (specifically clear roles and responsibilities, and an official policy) will ensure we enjoy a healthy and vibrant web presence […]

How long will it take us to launch the new website? mStoner says 3,000 hours. We’ve sliced and diced several different approaches to make this process go faster and concluded “nine women can’t make a baby in a month.” It simply takes careful planning and work to get this right. UND and mStoner jointly developed […]

As we rethink our website, we’re challenged to ‘Think Different’ about why we have a website, who visits and how it’s used. Why do we have a website? This seems like a reasonable question but our site doesn’t have a single purpose. In fact, it’s not even one website; it’s many websites, managed by many people, serving […]

mStoner provided a series of deliverables that set the stage for how we’ll build a new website that addresses our internal needs and exceeds user expectations. Recommendations for Improvement The following reports are mStoner’s recommendations for how to proceed with web management. Additional input will be gathered from the project team, Marketing Council and others […]

We’re deep into the discovery phase of the website redevelopment project. mStoner is gaining an understanding our institution and web landscape by: Studying relevant materials such as strategic documents and recruitment materials Diving into our Google Analytics and site structure Checking out competitor sites Most importantly, mStoner is listening. mStoner visited campus on February 27–28, […]