Nov. 2024 Migration and Design Preview

Dear Campus Community,
We wanted to share some updates on the progress the Office of Communications and Marketing is making toward the redesigned university website.

Migration Update

In the last campus email, I shared information about the upcoming website migrations. We have now migrated nearly 80 sites and have about 95 more to go. All sites will be migrated before the December holiday break. We appreciate everyone who has worked with us to accomplish this important phase.

For the sites that have been migrated and editing access has been temporarily removed, we are continuing to work with departments to make mission critical edits to those sites.

Design and Features Preview

During the design feedback phase, many faculty, staff, and students were able to see some of the new designs and features. Here are a couple of those features that we wanted to share with the campus:

Breadcrumbs:

A breadcrumb is a website navigation feature that shows the path to the current page you are on. It helps visitors better understand their location on a website. This is a new feature for ualr.edu that will help visitors navigate through our website. The breadcrumbs will be near the top of each page in the blue (official brand color: ocean) bar.

The example below shows what the breadcrumb would look like if you were on the Department Scholarships page on the Applied Communication website.

Global Navigation:

The global navigation is the “mega menu” of links at the top of every page on ualr.edu. When the redesign began, the global navigation contained 118 links. Analytics showed us that many of these links were never clicked on and that the menu was difficult to navigate.

In 2022, we conducted months of research and user testing with students and employees to determine the best organization of the global navigation. When we created the new version, we were able to remove unused links and reorganize the sections in a way that best meets the needs of our audiences.

Current Global Navigation with the Admissions tab open:

New Global Navigation with the renamed Admissions and Aid tab open:

Global Footer:

When a site has the same footer on every page, it provides brand recognition and helps visitors find key information no matter what page they are on. The new site will have a global footer that includes important links for future students. Industry research and insight we received during the information architecture phase showed us that it’s a very common user experience for visitors to scroll to the bottom of a page to quickly find the key links.

New Global Footer:

While the global footer will be at the very bottom of every page across ualr.edu, each site will still be able to have their own footer that will sit right above the global footer. We were inspired by our agency partner to affectionately refer to this section as “the sock.” Your site’s current footer information will be displayed in the new “sock” section of your site.

The launch of a new site will bring some change and adjustments, but these improvements will have a lasting impact for our future and current students. Thank you for your support during this process!