Eastern's Web page gets more user-friendly

Eastern’s homepage has been undergoing renovation since September of last year to help increase its user-friendliness.

“We had a consult come in and show us that we needed to focus more on targeting external audiences,” said John Kissack, information technology specialist.

Since the renovation began, the technology team has been working with various consultants and experts in order to establish the most effective plan for implementing an enhanced Web page. The team will continue to work through May in hopes of having the new site up and running by the end of spring quarter.

“We began this project because of personnel changes last year. We plan on this site having easier navigation and to be more targeted at wider audiences like incoming freshmen,” Kissack said.

A main component of this transition will be the transfer of internal content, information for students and faculty, to an intranet location. By doing so, the technology team hopes to improve navigation by eliminating some of the excess information currently on the Web site.

“We purchased the software for the transition a few years ago and it is going to help us migrate everything from the old system to the new system,” Kissack said.

With budget cuts and economic decline in mind; Kissack said that “the only real cost now is time, the technology was purchased years ago, so all we have to spend is our time.”

The Web site renovation is a project that started from the ground up, with all prior aspects of the old site being eliminated.

“The new page is going to be dynamic and robust, we will be able to evolve it quickly with changing technology,” Kissack said.

Some of these changing technologies include Facebook, Twitter and more than150 other applications accessible from Eastern’s new Web site.

“Our new Web site effectively links students and faculty to all those applications, and people are excited to see that,” Kissack said.

The Web site will also include the latest Web technologies, and the renovation group will provide training on how to navigate through the new site.

“The Web site is going to be more structured but also have more flexibility,” Kissack said.
The structure lies in the easy navigation through various tools found on the page, and the flexibility refers to the ease of adaptation to new technologies.

To check out the plan for the new Web site, go to redesign.ewu.edu, only accessable on campus computers.