 College
Background
 Old website
 Project Research
 New website Development
 Implementation
 Lessons learned
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Largest community college system in Missouri
serving an area of about 700 square miles;
created by area voters in 1962
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Four campuses, three education centers
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Transfer, career and developmental programs
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Non-credit continuing education courses
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Various workforce development initiatives
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A “League for Innovation” institution
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25,000 credit students each semester
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40,000 non-credit each year
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31,000 workforce development students
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130 credit programs
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57 workforce development programs
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1,800 faculty (420 FT)
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3,500 employees
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Public Website
Users Website
(faculty, student organizations, classes
and staff)
Intranet (three sites: key resources
menu, static content pages, and a
SPS2001 document center)
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“One College”, …
but not a well
defined identity on
the web site
Issues and
problems with old
site
Developing a new
brand identity for
the institution
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Site is difficult to navigate – and to find
content – 16,000 pages with no standard
navigation!
Internal use content mixed in with other
content
Pages did not follow best practices for web
design
Most pages did not comply with our loosely
defined college standards
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Common to have over 2,000 broken links
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Non-compliance with ADA requirements
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Out-of-date content
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No unified appearance – brand identity was
fragmented at best to almost non-existent
No workflow, review or style editing process
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Taking content from the existing 16,000
pages to distill the items of need to audiences
Taking multiple sub-sites (i.e., programs and
departments) and integrating them together
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Meetings at each campus to introduce project
and seek cooperation and support
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2005 – Audience research conducted by
contracted firm
◦ Current and prospective students – focus groups
and online surveys
◦ Continuing Education and high school guidance
counselors – focus groups
◦ Key administrators and faculty influencers – phone
interviews
◦ Larger sample of faculty and staff – random, online
survey
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Registration
Hub for student news and communications
Access to all programs and classes
Class availability, times/room numbers,
changes, grades
Do everything online:
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Pay for classes
Get parking passes
Get books
“Not have to go to the campus”
Ervin Marketing Report, May 2006
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73%
70%
66%
61%
55%
-
accurate and timely information
easy registration process
ease of navigation
descriptions of programs
easy payment
Ervin Marketing Report, May 2006
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84.7%
82.4%
81.8%
77.9%
60.3%
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29.9% - can’t find what they are looking for
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Registration
Student Resources
Class Schedules
Blackboard
College Catalog
Ervin Marketing Report, May 2006
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Studied site’s navigation and search
capabilities
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92 charts provided a snapshot of the site’s
technological structure, showing the:
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Types of pages (html, asp, etc.)
Graphics used (jpg, gif, swf, etc.)
Links (html, CSS, mailto, scripted)
Server side (SSI) and client scripting
Other document types (pdf, doc, xls, ppt, etc.)
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One-on-one interviews with:
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Senior administrators
Technology executives
Student services staff
Web coordinators
and others
These employees were directly related to the
web site’s operation, administration, updates
and/or maintenance
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The existing public website will be replaced in
its entirety
The new website will focus on the needs of
our external constituents and will incorporate
the College’s new marketing, branding and
image campaign
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Intended to increase enrollment at the
College
Align with the college strategic mission
Simplify the experience for students
Management, faculty, staff and
administrators given the ability to develop
and update content to web-site
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The contents of the new website will be
developed by the outside vendor
The new web site will utilize the Serena
Collage web content management system to
simplify the publishing process and enable a
workflow driven web authoring environment
 Overall
 Technical
 User-Centric
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Rebrand the site to project STLCC as one
college
Build a site that allows visitors to select a
path based on personal needs
Create a new web content delivery system:
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Easy to update
Reinforces web standards
Provides a consistent user experience
Flexible to respond to changing needs
Embeds review, tracking and accountability
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Acquire and deploy technology that expedites
and streamlines the ongoing content
development and maintenance of the site
Continually evaluate the site’s effectiveness
by reviewing traffic metrics, click paths, on
site searches, and user studies
Use the fault-tolerant design of the existing
site
Create an agile technical environment for
future web-based functionalities
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Understand the current user experience
(qualitative research) and issues
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Determine features and functionalities
desired by users
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Reorganize and rewrite the content to fit the
needs of our target audiences
Integrate the site into the ongoing, daily
processes of the college
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College
• Leadership Team
• Ad Hoc Web Advisory Committee
• Management Team
• Technical Team
• Developer Team
• Content Team
Non-College (Vendors)
◦ Millennium Communications
◦ Tower 29
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Huge change in the culture of the way the
website was maintained
Shifting responsibility for campus Community
Relations and web coordinators
Web Authoring as a distributed responsibility
Identify person(s) responsible for web
authorship
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Role of the Ad Hoc Web Advisory Committee –
taxonomy (navigation, structure, organization)
Frequently accessed content on home page
Content management system to assure fresh,
reviewed content
Must be timely, accurate and consistent
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Provides structure to unstructured
content
Organizes together content from
multiple sources
Some users never search; and in many
cases search isn’t as effective as
structure
Allows users to find the content they
need in a way that makes sense to them
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Intent to use an outside firm on contract
◦ Encountered difficulties as they did not understand
the intricacies of the college
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More effective was the work of district
community relations personnel
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Reviews and edits were done internally
– a very slow process
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Final editing and last checks for AP style by
vendor
‣ Automate consistency and standards
through templates and required elements
‣ Rich text editing eliminates the need for
HTML or web editor experience
‣ Manage workflows with the combination of
task management and a review/approval
system
‣ Allow authorized users to easily add or
update content “anytime, anywhere” through
a browser
‣ Roll pages back to a previous version as
needed
‣ Schedule content replacement or removal
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SungardHE Banner (ERP) Self-Service
BlackBoard LMS
Home-grown applications
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Course Schedule
Schedule of Late-Starting Courses
Employee Directory
Continuing Education Registration
Student Application
Sexual Harassment, FERPA, and Diversity Tutorials
New system – Windows Live student e-mail
‣ New website went live March 9:
http://www.stlcc.edu
‣ In order to have a go-live date, a “line” had to
be drawn somewhere on what content would be
part of the initial deployment
 We used the Ad Hoc Web Committee to develop basic
guidelines for what was to be included for Phase 1
 There are some who feel their content was left out
when it is too important to not be included
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Focus can get redirected based upon urgency
of communications
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Underestimating timeline for content and
technical specifications development
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Working with several different vendors
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Vendor reshuffle
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Deploying new WCMS in conjunction with new
site
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New positions, new employees
◦ no blueprint for their jobs
◦ in a large, complex organization
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Internal audiences – time it takes to
communicate – delays caused by summer
schedules
Managing expectations of new site –
1,600 vs. 16,000 pages
◦ Where is my information???
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“Phase 2” begins  Corrections and updates
 WCMS contributor training
 New content based on feedback and metrics
analysis
 Development of interactive, more dynamic
content
 Development of department and unit’s pages
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“Phase 2+” - Student credentials and
my.stlcc.edu student portal
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Implementation of Enrollment management
◦ CRM
◦ Variable web content/print
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Addition of content that was not included in
the first phase
Blogs/Social networking
Continued focus on Brand Management
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The overall goal of project of creating a usercentric website was achieved
The new website contributed to the goal of
increase in enrollment
Phase I rolled out on time
The use of an outside evaluation
◦ Provided confirmation and justification for taking
on this huge project
◦ Justified funding for project
◦ Identified the need for dedicated positions
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National Council for Marketing and Public
Relations – Silver Award
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Active involvement of the faculty and staff
Use of outside vendors
◦ Discovery
◦ Web development
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Good internal cooperation between technical
and content
Smooth transition to new site
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Integration of home grown apps successful
WCMS – edit, review and deploy functions
going smoothly
Implementation of AP style
Setting a deadline and trying to stick to it forced us to make some tough decisions to
meet that deadline.
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Outside vendor
◦ Web development team needed a lot of effort to get
up to speed with WCMS
◦ Vendor used for writing of content never really hit
the mark – ended up using in house resources
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WCMS
◦ Issues integrating applications vendor never got a
handle on this
◦ User interface – edit function not as “friendly” as
desirable – Many support calls from occasional user
◦ Task management is cumbersome
◦ Uncertain future of vendor support
◦ Required desktop settings not necessarily
compatible with campus settings
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In house team undermanned – made meeting
deadlines very challenging
Content still needs to be re-written in a more
“user friendly” style – easier to read
Better information dissemination –
communication/feedback process with faculty
and staff during development – prior to
implementation
Faster implementation of additional/missing
content
◦ Departments
◦ Dynamic content
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Hard coding of static information – outside
vendor not familiar with internal resources for
dynamic content
We had more hardware than was necessary –
ASP & ASP.NET integration WCMS not realized
until after learning more about WCMS
capability
Internal technical staff would have benefitted
from earlier training
Identifying and training more content
contributors earlier
 Khouloud Hawasli
Acting Manager, Electronic Communication
Services
khawasli@stlcc.edu khawasli@stlcc.edu
 George Sackett
Web Content Supervisor
gsackett@stlcc.edu
gsackett@stlcc.edu
 Presentation is available online at:
http://www.stlcc.edu/presentations/