Catawba's New Website
Catawba's Former Website
After many months of planning, collaboration and development, Catawba College launched its newly redesigned website on March 14.
The redesign process, which included the migration of thousands of pages of content, began in early 2013. At that time, the Office of Public Relations conducted a website audit and surveyed all campus departments in order to document and carry forward the "best of" what Catawba's former website offered.
"It was extremely important to have input and participation from all of our campus constituents from the get-go," said Maegen Worley, the College's staff web designer and developer. Worley said the survey also provided an opportunity for departments to document any outdated or unnecessary content, as well as to collect feedback and suggestions for improvements. "This crucial step early in the process ensured that the design, development and architecture of the site content that followed would be based on both general and direct consensus."
Due to the mammoth amount of manpower and time that the new website development and content migration would involve, Catawba enlisted the help of Synchronicity, a Charlotte-based web design company. The team at Synchronicity worked closely with Worley to ensure that all technical and functional requirements were met and to keep the branding and goals of the new site design in line with the College's overall marketing efforts.
The project involved the development of a fully-customized website and content management system, including the following key features:
- Responsive, mobile-friendly design for optimal viewing on all devices, in addition to standard browsing
- Clean and simple visual design that would aid the usability, navigation, and ease of finding content
- Database-driven site content
- Multiple users/groups to help manage content
- Custom functionality, including a news and event manager allowing seamless, automated display of news and events from various departments throughout the site
- Advanced form tools for maximum flexibility in building forms
- Unified media gallery tool for posting and sharing photos, videos, and blogs
- News distribution management tool
- Continuation and improvement of pre-existing website functionality, including print/e-mail/social sharing tools, and an emergency alert notification banner, visible on all site pages
To further include and involve members of the campus community in the redesign process, Public Relations invited a group of students, faculty, trustees, staff and alumni to a take a "test drive" of the new website prior to launch in order to add final touches to the project.
Although Catawba's website will forever be growing and changing, the release of the new 2014 edition marks yet another step forward for the institution.
Visit the newly redesigned website at www.catawba.edu.
