Howard W. Hewitt – Why change a web page?
Putting a new face on the Wabash College website is not something we do without a lot of thought. This is not a redesign as much as a facelift. The changes we’ve implemented are mainly to drive web visitors to content they might miss.
The biggest change visitors will immediately notice is the right column. We started telling the stories of our students in a profile format more than two years ago. Those profiles consistently draw lots of visitors. We wanted to make those features more prominent and really highlight the outstanding young men attending Wabash College.
We will be adding more student features during the coming weeks.
Wabash college coaches, faculty, and primarily students jumped into the blogosphere in a big way more than a year ago. We now have more than 25 active blogs on our website and many more on the Blog landing page.
Last year we had three freshmen write about their first-year experience. We know statistically that nearly each blog received about 300 visits a day. This year we have the three freshmen in the photo here writing about their first year as Wallies. Jake Ezell, Michael Richmond, and Adrian Perez are posting 2-3 times a week.
Often times we read compelling stories about student life or the inside story on our sports teams and wonder if all our future students and alumni are getting to these great anecdote-laden pieces. So the “Read Wally Blogs” feature will direct you each day or so to a different blog within the website.
We also take a lot of pictures at Wabash College. Those of us in Public Affairs often tell freshmen to “get used to having your picture taken” you’re at Wabash College.
The “See Wabash in Pictures” link will allow us to get more faces than ever in front of our web visitors. And in the next few weeks we’ll debut a new Week at Wabash feature on our photo album landing page.
The “Attend Wabash Events” link on the lower right allows us to promote important speakers and events on campus.
Finally, we’ve changed the center news hole on the page to make it more visually appealing and add photos.
A big thanks for our “web committee” of Jim Amidon, Brent Harris, Chip Timmons, Brad Weaver and Mark Siegel. And, as always, a real tip of the hat to Weaver and Siegel for all their technical expertise. Jeana Rogers, media center, was a huge help in photo preparation.
There is no doubt we will undergo a complete website redesign some day in the near future. We are one of few colleges in the nation which takes a content-driven approach to our site. The College website is designed to tell the stories of Wabash College students, alumni, faculty and staff. That means we need to change our approach from time to time to do it in the most up-to-date manner.
For example, we’re using podcasts, soundslide programs, and eventually more video to tell these stories. And, we’ll probably make a few changes to the site as we implement those new tools.
Our site may not have the pizzazz of other sites, but ours is content heavy with the most important thing about Wabash College – our people.
If you have comments, please don’t hesitate to drop me an e-mail: Howard W. Hewitt, Director of New Media.
