Unifying Web Presence

I was in a two-hour meeting with a web design agency to take a peak at what to come at gwu.edu and all GW’s web sites. The direction will be a unified look and feel across the board to give users a better experience throughout GWU web sites.

The new site is nothing spectacular, but it does look promising in term of organization and structure. It will be powered by Vignette, a content management system. Since the new direction will be unifying all of GW’s web presence, the School of Business will have to follow the template. As much as I hate to work with a template, this move will make a much smoother experience for the users.

In addition, once the brand is established, the content could be concentrated on more. So even if I have to dismantle all of our sites and start over, I’ll be glad to for the benefit of the entire university web sites. I do hope that the university will stay firm with its direction. So far, I have not seen a university web site that has a look and feel across the board. As soon as you go into the academic programs, the sites begin to branch out on their own. We’ll see things go.