The aim of the new content is to show prospective students the fantastic experience on offer at York, not just on campus but also in our amazing city. We also want to illustrate that getting immersed in campus life isn't just about fun and meeting people - it's also about improving skills and employability. We're demonstrating these things with lots of examples of student activities, alongside student stories and rich imagery.
Amplifying the student voice is a key part of the project. We want to give the student perspective (which is of course what prospective students want) and we want to increase engagement with our student blogs - also new this recruitment cycle. So look out for student quotes and blog excerpts dotted throughout the content.
This is what the landing page looked like before the changes...
And here it is now...
As you can see we've got some graphical key facts about the University, an opening quote from Ben, the YUSU president; followed by image rich highlights of what's on offer. You can also see some of the latest student blogs posts and further down the page information about the various support mechanisms.
This is the new culture and entertainment page, which includes lots of compelling examples of what's on offer, backed up with the student view.
There are plenty more pages to look at, so feel free to peruse the new content at your leisure.
Not only have we completely refreshed the content, we've also used our shiny, new 'device friendly' templates. This means the content resizes dynamically for desktops, tablets and mobiles. This is part of an ongoing project which involves moving all our content for prospective students into the new design. Although I should say, it isn't as simple as just moving the content - the content has been reviewed, rewritten and restructured to give a better and more consistent user experience. So far we've redeveloped the undergraduate, postgraduate, accommodation and student life sections. At the moment we're working on the international students section.
As with all our content development projects it's been a collaborative process. We couldn't redevelop our content without the expertise and knowledge of our subject matter experts. For this project we've worked with our fantastic student intern Katie, who's been keeping us on track in terms of the student view. YUSU have also been involved in reviewing the content which has been a really valuable part of the process. And last but not least our colleagues in student support have also helped with checking content and providing information.
In terms of measuring success, our overarching goals are to increase engagement with the content and improve perceptions about York student life. So we've set various measurable goals to see if we achieve this. For example, we ran a survey with currents students about the old content and we're doing the same survey for the new content, so we can measure students' perceptions of the content. You can find out more on the Wiki page about the project.
If you have any student life content featured in your department pages, we would be grateful if you could replace it with a link to the new content.
Finally, if you have any feedback on the new content you can let us know at: digital-marketing@york.ac.uk or via the comments below.
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