USU Web site to have a face lift
In February the Utah State University Web site will have a new face.
USU webmaster Charles Thompson said he is working nearly 12 hours a day seven days a week with a team of about 25 representatives from each college and the administration to improve the visual identity and add action and emotion to the site.
“Strong visual identity is inherent to brand,” Thompson said. “We need to project a stronger image.”
Thompson said the Web site is one of the biggest recruitment tools for the university. The team is going to move away from the landscape images to create a more intimate look. Those images will be replaced with action, people, and emotion which will give potential students a more up-close and personal look at USU, he said.
Thompson said currently the USU site is decentralized. Every site has a different look and feel with different logos. Thompson plans to make the site more centralized to portray campus unity.
Visually, Thompson plans to move away from the primarily blue and white colors the site now has.
“The school colors will still be the base colors, we just plan to liven it up a bit,” he said.
The team also plans to make the site more efficient for students. Thompson said the new site should be able to get users to places in three clicks as opposed to the run around on the current site.
“We really want to put the students first on this one,” Thompson said.
He said his team went out on a crusade to meet the students and find out what they wanted in order to create a site which will fit the student body. Thompson said the new site will be more appealing to 18 to 22-year-olds.
Though the site will be radically changed, Thompson doesn’t anticipate a difficult transition. The team will be deleting old data and adding new, and it should be much easier to find information, he said.
As far as funding goes, Thompson said the public relations and marketing department has put every last cent into the project.
“We’re now broke, but this is important,” Thompson said. “The Web site is a way to reach out to the public and we are putting everything we have into this.”
Thompson said the project is very much a team effort. With people working from each college, the team has a wide representation. They want input from everyone. He said even after the site launches, they will still be working to improve it for all users.
The site will launch Feb. 1, 2002.