Website Strategy
Chico State has kicked off a comprehensive web project as a strategic investment in the University’s long-term success and enrollment growth.
Timeline
Updates will be rolling out in phases.
- Phase 1—Top level pages very important to prospective students—launching in August 2024.
- Phase 2—Academics Colleges and priority pages that have a direct recruitment and retention impact—rolling out in waves during the Fall 2024 semester and carrying into Spring 2025.
- Phase 3 and Beyond—We will work with leadership to prioritize areas for future release.
Key Components
- website redesign - graphical elements and fonts used on web pages will reflect the university rebrand more closely. High-level pages first, then the rest in phases—see Timeline section for more detail.
- site slimming - reducing 17,000+ web pages down to 2,000–4,000 pages.
- content strategy - a process that ensures quality assurance and that the number of pages remains manageable after site slimming.
- training - best practices will be developed and individuals responsible for the maintenance of web content will be trained on the new process.
Problems to Solve
The website redesign and strategy is being developed to solve these problems:
- it's difficult to navigate the website
- Google search results can be hard to use and contain outdated information
- major inconsistencies exist across websites
- unprofessional-looking pages are diminishing the brand image
- we are not optimizing the website in a strategic way because the maintenance of a decade-plus of bloat requires too much time and energy.
Consequently, the Chico State website is underperforming as a marketing tool to attract prospective students and is not serving current students, staff, and faculty as well as it should.
FAQs
- How will I know when it's my turn for our site?Web Services is working with unit and division leadership to schedule project engagement. A dean or MPP will communicate to their team to notify scheduled areas of what to expect at the beginning of the process.
- Will my existing content be deleted?Web Services will not delete any content without making prior arrangements with the responsible area.
- Will I still be able to edit my site?All active site maintainers will retain access to Cascade and their current sites. Changes in site access (ex: I moved from one department to another and need access to a different site) are reviewed against our updated standards.
- Can I still get people trained in Cascade?Web Services has entered a cool-down period for Cascade training. Don’t plan on training new site maintainers if you already have folks with access. We have reduced Cascade training opportunities. If you need support with site maintenance, please use our Web Support ticket. Our services are now free of charge.