We just launched a completely revamped Office of Housing & Residential Life (opens new window) website. The old site was one of the first sites our department designed over six years ago and it was way past due for re-alignment.

Above you can see the old and new homepages. The old site was great for the campaign at the time but it was over long ago. It didn't offer much space for news, events or promotions. We changed all that, the new homepage is still being tweaked but as you can see there is room for a branding image, promotions, news and events. The left hand menu highlights the three most used areas on the site, Applying, Returning Students and Housing Options. The promotions area lets the department highlight new items and deadlines visually to call attention to them.

In addition to the home page the child pages have also been reconstructed to highlight random photos of the housing options. After talking to current housing students we realized that the one thing that changed their mind about living on campus was seeing and experiencing the rooms. We set out to highlight photos of the rooms on every page on the site.

Lastly the content has been worked through with a fine tooth comb. What we found after doing a content audit was a large amount of redundant and out of date content. We ended up removing 20% of the pages from the new navigation and cleaned up all link titles and lists. It was a breath of fresh air for the housing staff to see just how clear the information is on the new site. The goal was to reduce phone calls about basic information. It's too early to tell but we will soon know if we did our job.

View the new Office of Housing & Residential Life website at: http://housing.wayne.edu/ (opens new window)