Website Improvement

Follow UND's website improvements.

Shopping for Programs at UND

Categories: Design

Imagine for a moment you are Emily, a 17 year-old-senior from a suburb of the Twin Cities. You are at the top of your class and exploring several regional college options. You don’t know what you want to be, but you want a good career that pays well. You rely on Google to find majors […]

A New Search Experience

Categories: Deploy

The Need Back in January 2017, we learned from in-person focus groups that campus was frustrated with the UND.edu search experience. We also learned our current search appliance (Google Site Search) will be discontinued, making it necessary to find a new on-site search solution. The Goal The ultimate search will understand everything in the world […]

New Calendar Launches 12.18.17

Categories: Deploy

We’re working hard to launch our new event calendar on December 18, 2017 (see 8.31.17 post). The new calendar will function and filter events differently from the current calendar; therefore we aren’t able to easily import events from the current calendar to the new calendar. We’re doing our best to transfer what we can, but […]

New UND Home Page

Categories: Design

Research Driven Design We asked for your input and you acted! Over 1,500 current students (38%), prospective students (37%), faculty/staff (10%), alumni (10%) and parents (5%) provided feedback on two home page desktop design concepts. Both concepts tested strong for brand articulation. Concept A won in terms of overall appeal receiving 58% of votes, but […]

Get a Head Start

Categories: Deploy

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 […]

Web Policy

Categories: Planning

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.

Calendar Screen Shot

New Technology Tools

Categories: Deploy

Calendar Screen Shot

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 […]

Home page concept B

Help Pick the New UND Home Page

Categories: Design

Home page concept B

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 […]

Do the Wave

Categories: Deploy

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 […]

Managing Chaos

Categories: Deploy

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 […]