A new look homepage, coming soon

Over the past few months we've been looking at ways of improving the University homepage.

We're finally at the stage where it's ready to be revealed, so without further ado, here's how it's looking (click the image for a full size version):

What's changed?

A better overview of what's going on

One of the key aims of the redesign was to make the homepage a lot more lively and do a better job of representing the diverse range of activity going on throughout the University. Apart from the news items which changed every few days, most of the old homepage was static, staying the same for long periods of time. We wanted that to change, so that repeat visitors to the page (both internal and external) would get to see something different each time, showing them various aspects of university life.

Instead of showing a large random image, there's now a dedicated space for showcasing big research discoveries, high profile speakers coming to campus, achievements, campus expansion news, etc - anything that shows what a great place York is to study or work.

In the old design, we could just about cope with one of these features at a time, but the page became very cluttered when we had several of them:

We're now using a sliding interface to allow us to have multiple features at the same time. This is something that we've been doing on departmental sites for a while (eg see the Computer Science homepage) - but is new to the homepage.

Keeping it up-to-date

Having such a high profile space for featured content means that we'll have to make sure that there's always something new to put up there.

One of the first things that we've done is to set up a homepage editorial group, with representation from the press, publications, events and web teams. The job of this group will be to identify stories that could be featured on the homepage, and to also find / produce content that we can link to from the homepage.

Getting input from people across the whole University is going to be absolutely key to this, so keep an eye out for further messages.

Clearer paths to major areas of the site

The major sections of the site are now all together in a horizontal navigation bar across the top. The 'directory listing' type parts of the site (A-Z, departments, contacts, jobs, etc) are all grouped together, near the search box.

Simplified colour palette

We've moved away from the rainbow of blue, purple, orange and green, and are now using our corporate green. This brings the homepage in line with the other top-level parts of the site which have already moved into the Web CMS, such as About the University, Research and Campus development.

Links to social networks

A lot of online activity these days goes on beyond the limits of our website, particularly in places like Facebook and Twitter. There's now a link from the homepage to a new directory of social media activity, listing our main corporate presences and the ones maintained by individual departments and offices.

A first step, not the end of a process

We know that not everyone who uses the University website sees the homepage - just under half of our visitors never encounter it (usually having arrived at a lower level part of the site via a search engine). We need to continue to make improvements that will improve the experience of all of our visitors, no matter where they begin their journey.

One key piece of work is that we've started working with Student Recruitment and Admissions on making some big changes to our central student recruitment pages.

Launch date

We're planning on launching the new homepage next week, on Monday 13 December 2010.

If you have any questions or comments, please email them to web-office@york.ac.uk, or leave a comment below.