Linnea Kedziora
Contributing Writer
Wooster.edu is getting a revamp, with the project currently underway. According to Director of Technical Services Vincent DiScipio, this project is being taken on by the College Relations and Marketing sections of Web Communications. These updates come as a relief for students such as Nascha Brannon ’22 who finds the website as it currently is, “Inconsistent and out of date [and] seems unmanaged.”
Since the website is the top result on a “College of Wooster” Google search, Wooster.edu is important for public outreach and recruitment. However, current students also interact with the website regularly to do things like consult the menu at Lowry and make appointments at APEX and the Wellness Center. Marketing and College Relations are running the website revamp to focus on making the website easier to use for perspective students, making a better first impression than an outdated site would.
Melissa Schultz, director of Digital Communications, who is overseeing the revamp also commented. As a first step, an updated news page has been launched (News.Wooster.edu). This site features the types of news prospective students and alumni might find useful, such as descriptions of campus events and profiles of accomplished students and alumni. According to Schultz, profiles from the news page will soon be incorporated into department pages on the main website, providing examples of work that each department does.
“Navigation, underlying information architecture, page layouts will all change to improve the user experience for our primary audience of prospective students,” Schultz said. “We are including features to assist the on-campus community with improved navigation for internally-focused content as well until such a time as Wooster has a dedicated intranet. There will also be new content focused on the outcomes of a Wooster education — the ‘Wooster edge.’”
Complaints such as those expressed by Brannon will be addressed with changes to the architecture of the site. It seems, however, that Wooster is planning on having an intranet system to serve the needs of existing students in the future, leaving Wooster.edu to be a focused resource for prospective students and others who may be interested in general information about the school.
Involvement of current students in relation to the website revamp comes mostly in the form of student employees working on advancements, as well as maintenance on the existing site. Research gathered on prospective students includes “user testing last summer with visiting prospective students to inform decision-making” and “a listening tour over the course of Fall semester with various groups across campus to gather insight and feedback on the existing site and its content.” Since the changes are directed towards prospective students, research was primarily conducted on them rather than current students.