A new digital face for Tulane University
A website is the digital face of the university. It serves as the main marketing tool to prospective students, as well as the utilitarian portal for conducting all university business. This fall, eight years after its last major redesign, the Tulane University website is undergoing a massive overhaul that will effectively represent the caliber of the institution today.
“University Communications & Marketing is partnering with a company called mStoner to redesign Tulane.edu, with assistance from our colleagues in Technology Services,” says Rachel Hoormann, executive director of web communications. “The ultimate objective is a beautiful, useful and effective site that brings consistency to Tulane"s web presence.”Strategy firm mStoner, whose past clients clients include Brown University, the State University of New York, Fordham University and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, visited the uptown campus in June and July 2015. They facilitated six focus groups and met with 75 individuals, including prospective students, current students, alumni, staff members, faculty and administrators (including Tulane President Mike Fitts) to unpack the main messages of Tulane today.
As they gathered feedback, they noticed definite themes emerging:
⢠Public service and community engagement are in Tulane"s DNA.
⢠Tulane is the ideal size and has the opportunities and benefits of a much larger university.
⢠When people think of Tulane, they think of New Orleans. Alumni are tied almost as closely to their city as they are to their university.
A common wish list item was for research and academics to have a bigger footprint on the website, and for the vast opportunities and interdisciplinary nature of research at Tulane to be showcased. Feedback also validated analytics showing that prospective students are the primary audience for top-level pages.
Using these ideas as a launch pad, mStoner has developed two concepts that are being viewed this week by test groups of Tulanians. The concepts will also be available for viewing at the web communications booth during Tech Day, Sept. 24â“25. After feedback is incorporated, implementation begins in October. Project leadership is aiming for a January 2016 launch of the new website, Hoormann says.
Interested in keeping up with the redesign process? Visit http://tulane.edu/redesign/ for a more in-depth explanation of the vision and goals, and for webmaster resources.
