UC ANR website gets a new look

Colleagues,

Last month, Strategic Communications and IT “soft-launched” the website redesign project to test the site in the live environment and complete bug fixes before an official launch was announced. Bug fixes are complete, so we are now happy to share broadly that the site is live.

Why the new design?

Goals of the web design project include:

• Improve the content structure and new top down navigation for the ucanr.edu home page and high level pages beneath ucanr.edu
• Increase utility and discoverability of news and event information on ucanr.edu
• Resolve major brand inconsistencies across the Division's web presence
• Better showcase the impacts of UCANR's work
• Implement a workflow structure; update content workflows and curation strategy
• Implement new design elements that will update the appearance of all 600 Site Builder sites

What is the scope of the redesign project?

The website redesign project has two areas of scope. The first was to refresh the design of the main ucanr.edu website, comprised of the top few pages of news, events and educational content for the Division. This content is now broken out into six focus areas (aka brand strengths) and managed through editorial workflows in Strategic Communications. The second area of scope is making the designs compatible with all Division websites without a significant impact to website owners. This second area of work is happening now, and IT has begun rolling out websites using the new design. You can learn more about the second phase here.

How can you share your feedback on the first phase?

There is a feedback link on the lower right side of the home page footer. We welcome your input.

What's next for ucanr.edu?

CSIT is meeting with leadership next month to establish the long-term strategy for evolving the website to (1) better address the core goal of making educational content easily discoverable by our target audiences and (2) effectively showcase the impact and value of ANR as a whole to increase awareness and support of our programs.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions or comments about editorial workflows or feature ideas for the home page. 

Linda Forbes
Director of Strategic Communications

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

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