If your most recent journey around the Furman University website has seemed a little different in places, it\u2019s not your imagination.<\/p>\n
The university unveiled the first phase of its new website redesign today (Dec. 18), which includes a revamp of the homepage and the top-level pages of the website\u2019s six main areas: About, Academics, Admissions, Tuition & Aid, Campus Life and Athletics.<\/p>\n
The university plans to roll out the academic department pages and other sites after Jan. 1, with the goal of having the entire website redesigned and moved into WordPress by the end of summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cRedesigns occur regularly every four years or so, but last October\u2019s unveiling of The Furman Advantage provided extra urgency to overhaul the site to reflect the university\u2019s strategic shift,\u201d said Ryan Fisher, Furman\u2019s director of digital marketing.\u00a0 \u201cWe wanted to craft a site that we feel genuinely reflects Furman\u2019s character and the experience a student has attending the university.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fisher said the redesign includes more dynamic video and photos and less text so visitors can quickly scan pages and navigate to the information they are looking for. The experience for visitors using mobile devices has also been improved significantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to show what the Furman experience is like, not just tell about it,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cAnd since about 35 percent our visitors browse the site on a mobile device, we completely overhauled the way the site works on those devices. We also made the site easier to use for visitors with disabilities, and we made sure to verify our improvements with industry-standard software tests and in-person user testing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The website\u2019s content is also being moved from the Microsoft SharePoint content management system into WordPress, which will provide campus web editors greater ease and flexibility to update department pages.<\/p>\n