Project site revamp

As well as our main University website there are a number of other sites which the Digital Marketing Team look after. The first is our staff intranet (in.beds) and there's also the dedicated Library website which is managed by their Web and Publications Officer.

We also have 45 individual micro sites (or 'project sites' as we call them). These vary in purpose, with the majority of them promoting various conferences and University funded projects. They are all setup and monitored by us and then the relevant authors are given access to go in and add content, which we approve.

Since our new website launch last year they've kind of been neglected so we felt it was about time we had a proper look at bringing them up to speed. so, the first thing we did was... Audit!

This threw up some very interesting results, especially with regards to the amount of page views and user engagement. Therefore, we decided that the first thing we needed to do was liaise with our authors to close the sites that weren't getting hits and prioritise the most visited ones.

It's always good if you can backup arguments with solid evidence, and the stats provided by Google Analytics have proved invaluable when undertaking with authors about possibly closing their sites.

The work has now begun on re-styling them all and we're really pleased with how they're all going to look. The new style is in keeping with the main site and now allows individual banners to be added. There's also loads of options to customise each site differently with 5 colours and various social media integration options.

Take a look at our Tilda Goldberg Centre site for a sneak preview of how they're all going to be looking as we roll out the new, refined design.