Challenge

• Develop a website that serves multiple audiences, including internal staff.

• Aggregate and organize more than 1,000 pages of information in a way that is intuitive and easily accessible to the diverse needs of end users.

• Communicate USM's mission and value to the public.

• Leverage existing USM branding.

• Create a site that is visually compelling and appealing.

Solution

• Gathered input from the USM community, including members of the Board of Regents and USM staff, as well as university presidents, faculty, staff, and students.

• Used audience insights and feedback to redesign the site with an emphasis on ease-of-use, intuitive navigation, improved search functionality, and visual appeal.

• Conducted usability studies to optimize navigation and finesse design prior to launch.

• Organized information according to the needs of each audience segment. Current and prospective students enrolled in USM institutions can easily access tuition and fee schedules, as well as application, transfer, and transcript request instructions; stakeholders can quickly find current information on system policies and pertinent legislative issues.

Technology

This is a large site, containing more than 900 static HTML pages. To meet an accelerated production schedule, LMD developed a content parser that allowed over 90% of the static content to remain intact. The parser strips off unnecessary HTML and puts the content into the new template. Using this method, the site also kept its original link structure, which was desired due to the number of sites linking to USM.

• PHP 4.3+
• MySQL 4
• XHTML 1/CSS 2.0
• e2 Framework and CMS back end supporting WYSIWYG editing of HTML content
• Custom content parser and automated templating