The ACC Web Redesign Project offers the chance to implement clear standards and practices that ensure our website provides a good user experience, improves performance, and enhances security..Here are some of the challenges we aim to overcome, while taking full advantage of the opportunities this project provides us.
Challenges
- Unclear Governance: The website is a reflection of the College’s culture of working in silos. It’s important to establish an inclusive shared governance structure to update outdated web policies, set priorities and expectations, and clarify roles and responsibilities.
- Too BIG: The austincc.edu domain houses 300 websites and 270,000 web pages, creating redundancies and confusion, making it difficult to maintain and ensure ADA compliance.
- Confusing: Navigation, design, and content are inconsistent in places, often designed for a department instead of the end-user. This creates a disconnected, confusing experience, redundancies, and/or gaps of information.
- Systems misalignment: The College has multiple systems that require unique journeys and processes, creating a complicated user-experience, misaligned data, and possible security concerns.
- No “real” intranet: There is not a clear distinction between public (external) and private (internal) web content, mixing public- and private-information adds to user frustration and increases security risks.
Opportunities
- Establish an inclusive process: Create a collaborative web design/approval process and shared governance structure to guide the redesign project and oversee college web policies.
- Create user-first design: Prioritize the needs of the user at every stage with 100% mobile-friendly design and ADA compliance. Design for the user, not the office.
- Improve communications: Provide consistent, clear information in a centralized, easy-to-access location with true intranet and portal systems.
- Improve performance/data: Reduce web page bounce rates, align systems to improve tracking, and apply search engine optimization (SEO) across the site.
- Enhance web security: Simplify/align systems and fix potential vulnerabilities.
- Boost brand value: Apply the College’s brand standards with a consistent voice and design elements that reflect the College’s values of courage, compassion, joy, and yes!
- Get ready for the future: Prepare for Web 3.0, which is the next generation of the web that incorporates AI and gives users a more personalized experience.