Once labeled as one of the worst sites on campus was quickly hailed one of the best. I was brought in for a 6 month period to help bring the Career Services & Student Center Site to a higher standing amongst other campus departments.
Just before I began working on this project back in 2010 I was told that the University had just conducted audits on all departmental websites and ranked them based on topics such as Design, Content, Accessability, Ease of Use, and Traffic. The Career Services & Student Center was ranked among the lowest in the school for many of these areas.
Career Development Center - Original Site (Home Page)
I began the transformation by speaking with many of the councilors and department aids to establish the key objectives for the site and students who will use it. After gathering information from the business side I approached students both visiting the office as well as other students from around campus. From the students who visited the site reported that not only was it confusing but they had to stop by the office to get the answers they needed. Some from around campus said that they didn't know there was a department that assisted in career counciling and preperations.
After gathering all the information I began to prepare a strategy by sketching out my approaches and listing out main objectives to accomplish.
Design
The University had some stict guidlines that required all department site to use a frame that was considered University standard. This left us with a section of the overall site to work with.
From the information I gathered, I set 3 main objectives:
Job Search - The departments main objectives are to prepare students to find and succeed at finding a career. The job Board CTA needed to be prevelant and one of the first things that is seen.
Upcoming Events - From seminars, workshops, contests and Career Fairs, students needed to know when and where these events were available to attend.
Work Resources - There are many resources the department provides to assist student in the career search.
Content
There were over 400 pages for what needed to be 15. Many people created pages for one-liners, events, or other informational purposes. Coming soon pages and blank pages were also found. Some content was removed and others combined. Most was also reworded to become a better fit for the audience.
Social
Traffic to the site was a stuggle they tried various adverstisements and campaigns to promote more students to utilize their services. No social was currently established. I setup facebook, twitter, and linkedIn accounts to begin an online presence that would allow students to easily find services that they need.
Facebook: uvucdcenter
Twitter: @UVUCDC
LinkedIn: uvucdc
Conclusions
Traffic increased heavily as the site was easier to navigate and much of the information students were looking for were within 1-2 clicks away. Utilizing the social strategy brought many other students to the knowledge and usefullness of the resources that the department could provide them. Follow up audits indicated drastic improvements to the site and overall usability.
