All posts by Daryl Poeira

umassd.edu redesign

University Marketing launched a redesign of the umassd.edu website.
Features:
  1. improved way-finding: incorporate dropdown navigation when child sections present in left navigation menu
  2. widen the site, incorporating gutters and grays for improved display on larger screens
  3. increasing size and readability of imagery and right column items like RFI forms, buttons
  4. condense user controls in order to lift site content as high on page as possible
  5. condensed user controls allow for more explicit calls to action (Tweet this page) and flexibility to add more functionality
  6. redesign the hero image incorporating more brand visual elements as well as giving the image more visual impact
  7. placing page title within content area to better associate title to content

Academic Calendar Redesign

University Marketing partnered with Online & Continuing Education and the Registrar’s Office to integrate their Academic Calendars into a single user experience.

https://www.umassd.edu/academiccalendar/

Features

  • a single, consistent user-experience
  • semesters and sessions compiled
  • leveraging the university events calendar to maintain their dates
  • the ability to display the data across umassd.edu

Online & Continuing Education homepage redesign

University Marketing launches redesign of of Online & Continuing Education homepage:

https://www.umassd.edu/online/

Features

  • Prominent, embedded inquiry form to more easily capture inquiries more efficiently
  • Program finder to allow users to browse online program offerings in fewer clicks
  • Feeding in information session events from CRM directly onto home to allow for faster browsing of what’s available in fewer clicks

 

Marketing redesign

In an effort to better serve the UMassD campus community, University Marketing has launched a redesign of their website.

https://www.umassd.edu/marketing/

Features

  • improved visual interface
  • reorganization of our guides and self service offerings

Looking ahead

University Marketing will continue to evaluate and roll-out improvements based on your feedback. Some items we are actively working on or will be in the months ahead:

  • improvement and simplification of intake process
  • redesigning brand guidelines into a user-friendly web experience

Optimized web experience

University Marketing is dedicated to improving umassd.edu website performance. We recently launched several improvements to umassd.edu image processing to ensure optimal web performance across all devices and regions.

Truly responsive images

Same image will be served up in different sizes depending on your screen size.

Images have been visually responsive on umassd.edu for best display on all devices; they scale up/down. Images on umassd.edu are now set to crop down to the best-fit for that particular device. Simply put: mobile device loads an image much smaller than a desktop computer. The result is better performance on mobile devices that suffer from slow internet speeds due to data plan or signal strength.

Image optimization

Optimizing images is all about balancing file size and image quality. Images are now optimized and resized in Terminalfour without the need to rely on content editors’ knowledge of image-editing software or compression methods.

Modern formats

Most images on umassd.edu are now processed as WebP. Using WebP, we can serve smaller, richer images that make the web faster. [source] If you are using an older browser, we have jpg available to display as a fallback. This all happens without the need for our content editors to engage, just upload your single jpg image, same as before.

Content delivery

Most of umassd.edu assets are now served through a CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN serves assets from a location nearer to the visitor, speeding up the site and improving the overall user experience. Globally distributed CDN servers ensure that regardless of where your site is hosted, its assets will be served from a location close to your visitors.

lazy loading illustration source: imperva.com

Lazy loading

University Marketing recently upgraded our lazy load engine [source – Vanilla Lazyload]. Lazyload speeds up your web application by deferring the loading of your below-the-fold images, animated SVGs, videos and iframes to when they enter the viewport. You may notice some images fade into view as you scroll down the page, that’s Lazyload!

UMassD on the web in 2021

 

UMassD and most if its subdomains and partner sites garnered over 13 million pageviews in 2021. Let’s take a look back at some web stats from 2021.

πŸ† Most viewed programs

Second Degree Accelerated BS in Nursing (23k) was our most-visited program webpage followed closely by Computer Science MS Online (21k), Online MBA (20k),Β Nursing MS Online (19.5k), andΒ Data Science MS (18k).

While our most viewed on-campus undergraduate programs for 2021 were Nursing BS, Crime and Justice Studies BA, and Computer Science BS, BS/MS.

πŸ† Most visited college website

Our most viewed school or college website was UMass Law with almost exactly 300,000 pageviews.

πŸ† Most viewed profile page

Erin Bromage’s profile generated 4,000 pageviews, followed by Honggang Wang, Ramprasad Balasubramanian,Β  Vijaya Chalivendra, and Pamela Karimi.

πŸ”Ž Most popular search term

The most popular search term used on umassd.edu site search was “academic calendar”.

πŸ† Most viewed feature story

UMass Dartmouth’s most viewed feature story was about Grace Perry ’20 doing research at Harvard Medical School.

πŸ† Most viewed news story or press release

U.S. News & World Report naming UMass Dartmouth “2022 Best College” and Celebrating Women’s History were among the most viewed news stories of 2021.

404 Page not found πŸ™

The number of 404 Page not found errors for umassd.edu was down 58.3% from 2020, nice πŸ‘