Website Redesign

As co-leader of the Communications Committee at Colorado State University (CSU), I was responsible for leading the website migration and redesign for our unit in the Office of International Programs under the supervision of our Associate Director. Our server and website platform were set to expire and we had two months to make the switch. A formidable deadline when we had to consider the migration, review, and consolidation of over 250 existing pages on the old website and the complete creation of the new one. All while everyday workloads persisted. Remarkably, we were able to complete the project a week before our deadline with nearly 100 redundant pages removed in the consolidation effort.

Much of the migration was delegated to support staff throughout the office allowing for many hands to make light work of the task. After the migration, I assigned sections of the website to main staff members for review. While they worked on their projects, others focused on design and updating each page for a more dynamic user experience.

One of our goals for the new website was to better communicate our story to our potential and current students, the larger CSU community, and those who live within and without Fort Collins. We needed to find a way to show who we are, what we do, and what our international students and scholars do for us through collaboration and cultural exchange. This part of the website development is ongoing and includes highlighting student and scholar successes and contributions to their fields of study as well as increased social media interactions.

Throughout the development process, our team had to respect and maintain the pre-set community guidelines for not only our office’s website design but also those determined by the main marketing and branding office of CSU. This often included needing to change tactics for image choices and content presentation.

For my leadership and involvement, I was presented with an award “in recognition and appreciation for outstanding contribution to the ISSS website revision project.”

Please take a moment to review the videos below to see a comparison of the old website to the new and how the information was migrated from accordion headers to individual pages, updated for a more modern look, and the overall dynamic and interactive user experience.

The new website was launched in January 2020 and I have been maintaining, updating, adding content, and streamlining it to best SEO practices ever since.