With the launch of the new School of Healthcare Sciences conveniently coinciding with the University’s development of a new system to manage its online content, it was perhaps inevitable that we would be one of the first five Schools to develop a new website within the new system.
Our website is our key communication tool; it provides the most visible and the most easily accessed information about our School. Without a single School website, presenting a vision of ourselves as one coherent unit to an external audience was something of a challenge. However, creating a website for a new school would prove to be something of a challenge itself – instead of editing, amending and improving existing content, we were faced with the process of creating entirely new content from scratch.
Each of the five schools selected to undergo the process of migration from the old Content Management System to the new CMS, the imaginatively titled Squiz, was assigned a Web Producer from the central Web Team. We were given the (long suffering) Bethan, who can claim to have single-handedly wrestled us and our website into the kind of shape that meant we were the first school in the University to ‘go live’.
Developing new content…
The first step in the process, we were informed somewhat apologetically by Bethan, was to undertake an extensive audit of the existing two sites. Presented with a spreadsheet (created by something called, ominously, ‘Deepcrawl’) that listed each and every page on each site, we had to decide which pages needed to be kept, updated, or archived. Confidently, we selected ‘Archive’ for every page – noting ‘create new content with information pertinent to new School’ for each one. This was something that would come back to haunt us when, at a later stage, we remembered the 250 pages of essential information on student placements that wouldn’t fit into the website’s new structure…
The next step was to think more strategically about what information we presented on the website, and how. The University’s vision for its new website is that it will function as a communication tool primarily for an external audience. All content needs to be consistent, fact led, and reflective of the University’s brand identity. And, most crucially, it needs to function in such a way that visitors can easily find information that is important to them.
We embraced this ideology, and committed to the idea that the website would be used primarily to convey our key messages; that the School of Healthcare Sciences is a leading provider of healthcare education, and a centre for world-class research that directly benefits the lives of patients and their families.
We stripped out the information for current students and staff that was cluttering our old sites and instead focused on signposting crucial information to prospective students, explaining our research goals clearly, and showcasing the School’s fantastic facilities.
Getting to grips with Squiz
Once we had an idea about our content and had sourced relevant information to ensure we were providing only correct and up-to-date details, we faced our next challenge – getting to grips with the new CMS. The Web Team had created the basic structure of top level pages – About us, Courses, Research etc. After some in-depth training from Bethan, and under her ever watchful eye (sometimes she would start editing pages as we were inputting content) we started to populate our website.
Writing our content, in a style that was appropriate for a website, was perhaps the easiest part of the process… Key to the website working in the way we wanted it to, we needed to ensure that each page served a purpose. And so each page had to be edited, containing useful links to signpost further information, and adding appropriate calls to action to encourage our audiences to engage with us. In addition to this, our pages needed to look as dynamic as possible – so we had to rise to the challenge not only of sourcing interesting images to illustrate a lot of different content, but of selecting images that would satisfy a range of disciplines.
Facing time pressures to launch the site as soon as we could to ensure incoming postgraduate students could access up-to-date module information, we grappled gamefully with Squiz. In comparison with the old CMS, it has a much more user-friendly interface. Once you’ve got to grips with the way content is stored (in a folder system much like a shared drive), it’s quite straightforward to navigate. And of course, the Web Team were always happy to help, as well as respond to queries promptly and helpfully – rendering the entire process almost painless.
Maintaining momentum
The site was launched quietly and with surprisingly few hiccups for such a large project. Other than a few missing modules and some incorrect profile information, a hangover from the previous system, we were able to give ourselves a pat on the back and contemplate moving on to the next big project.
The website, of course, isn’t a static thing. Amends, updates and improvements will always have to be (and already are being) made. We continue to develop and add ever more dynamic content. The Marketing and Communications Team are developing processes to manage incoming requests to change / add content from the School’s 350 members of staff; assigning teams to manage relevant parts of the website, with ultimate approval needed by the Marketing Team to ensure consistency of tone and message, will come in time. We also have to ensure that information for current students and staff is placed somewhere sensible for them to access.
In summary, the development of a new website and introduction to a new CMS will see benefits across the board. The site is slicker and, thanks to the expertise of the Web Team, more in keeping with a modern approach to web design and content – which better reflects our position at the forefront of modern healthcare research and education. The system is quicker and easier to use, which will make administration of the site less time-consuming, freeing up resources. We won’t be looking back…..
www.cardiff.ac.uk/healthcare-sciences