New website to be launched soon

By Sara Eisenhauer
Cardinal Staff

Design challenges and content fine-tuning have delayed the release of the new Saint Mary’s University website for at least another week, according to SMU Vice President of Communication and Marketing Bob Conover.

“We assured faculty and staff that we would launch the new site when it works well technically and the content is accurate,” said Conover.

The redesigned website, which was originally estimated to be accessible Dec. 1, has presented challenges for the SMU Web team because of formatting changes.

Because the new site will focus on reaching external audiences, the SMU “Inside Pages,” or www2. pages, have been revamped to concentrate internal information for current students, faculty and staff into one common area. The new “Inside Pages,” which now feature new links and updated content, have been up and running since the beginning of the new year.

“This is very different from our old website,” said Conover. “It has been a challenge to design a site that works well for the entire university.”

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The new site will not only serve the Winona campus, but will be completely functional for all programs at all levels and locations, Conover said.

Planning for the new site began in early 2007 when the Communication and Marketing team decided the university needed a website that is more externally focused and easier to navigate.

Monta May, director of web communication, has been working with a team of designers and programmers to develop a site that will make it easier for external audiences such as prospective students to find the information for which they are looking.

“We don’t need to have prospective students’ parents having to wade through all of our internal business office forms when they are looking for financial aid information,” said May. “They just need to be able to go there and have the information right in front of them without all this other stuff mixed in- that just confuses things.”

To iron out some of the problems with the new format, faculty and staff were shown a draft of the site in mid-December. Making suggested changes to the navigation and content of the site is contributing to the delay in the site’s release, Conover said.