South Dakota State University will soon unveil a redesigned website featuring an updated look, enhanced accessibility and an overall modernization of the central platform.
In November 2023, University Marketing and Communications began the two-year project of updating the sdstate.edu website, a platform used by students, faculty and many others to access a wide variety of information related to the university.
“Websites are kind of like automobiles,” said Mike Lockrem, director of UMC, in explaining the reason for the update. “After a while, you have to put a lot of parts into them and do a lot of updates to fix a lot of things.”
Lockrem further explained why the website had to be fixed and why it took some time.
“I think we were just at a point where our current website is starting to require a lot of fixes and overhauls,” Lockrem said. “So, we’re building the same type of car, but it’s going to be a new car with a new engine.”
UMC’s scheduled launch date for the updated website is Jan. 21, 2025.
To begin the process, the web services team met with groups across campus before the project was approved to understand what improvements they would like addressed. Once it was approved, the Integrated Marketing and Communications Council worked to select the developer they thought would be best fit for the job.
Professor Rocky Dailey, a committee member representing Faculty Senate in the decision, said the group wanted to make sure the vendor was the right fit for SDSU. That required the vendor to have some experience working in higher education.
“We also wanted to make sure they would be able to complete the project in a reasonable amount of time,” said Dailey, a professor in the School of Communication and Journalism. “We also wanted to make sure we have some support after the initial launch, and obviously they needed to demonstrate quality of work in their past web projects.”
The committee evaluated presentations from multiple agencies and assessed each to determine which was suited the role. They assessed each developer’s proposal and compared it to their goals for the updated website, including accessibility, functionality and other desired features.
After discussion, the committee chose Lullabot to develop the project. The cost was about $600,000 spread over two fiscal years.
Jennifer Meiners, web communications specialist, and Michelle Watkins, web services coordinator, explained the main “pain points” that needed to be addressed by the agency developing the updated design:
· The style is old and needs a fresh modern update.
· The site is text heavy and has old information on it.
· It is difficult to find information because of the poor site navigation.
· Areas wanted a way to showcase their events.
· Backend management improvements were needed.
“The look of the site will change completely. Our 250-plus web editors across campus will have a new editor view to learn as well,” Meiners said. “The changes aren’t just visual. Another undertaking of this project was to review the content of the current site and update it to match the new modern style.”
The web services team has been working to condense the content on the current website to make it more streamlined. This involved meeting with several departments on campus to review their content and deleting outdated material.
User experience is a top priority because the website is highly trafficked. UMC numbers how that the platform has seen over 600,000 users from Google alone in the recent quarter. The team anticipates the improvements will increase these numbers and the time spent on the site.
“We are really excited for the launch,” Lockrem said. “It is technology, so we assume the launch will go well, but there’s probably a hiccup in there we’ll have to deal with; but that’s to be expected. I think hopefully people are pretty excited about what they see when we watch this thing in January.”
