I have extensive experience leading web strategy across a diversity of websites, creating websites, and upgrading existing sites and pages. Here are some of my recent projects examples.
Web Strategy
In my role as Executive Director of Communications and Marketing in Global Affairs at UC Davis, I oversaw globalaffairs.ucdavis.edu and also led team members and strategy for several other websites. As a part of the strategic communications planning and rebranding process I led, I created a web strategy, guidelines for best practices, and oversaw the redesign and migration of several websites.
This included combining some sites based on users, analytics, purposes, and potential for increased traffic (it worked!) and implementing a standard theme, branding hierarchy, and common look and feel across all Global Affairs sites.
Website Redesign
Building a new Global Affairs website in a new web system (Drupal-based) started with an audit of the existing structure, content, processes for web edits, needs from stakeholders. I also did a thorough dive into the analytics. Simultaneously, I was learning the new web system.
In redesigning the homepage, I narrowed the top navigation down from seven options to five. Knowing a top search question was: “What is Global Affairs?” I made a robust “About” page with a call to action to learn more about Global Affairs on the homepage. The rest of the homepage provides real estate for highly visited pages (Leadership, News, Events, and Travel Security) and pages we wanted to drive more traffic towards because of new initiatives (Funding and Resources, Global Education for All, and Partnerships).
The overall design, limited link farms and lists, and made use of high quality photography and new web capabilities.
Before: Homepage
After: Homepage
Given the newness of the organization and relevance of search terms, I revamped the “About” page and section to be more engaging and less administrative, and to keep users on the website.
Before: About
After: About
Another part of the website redesign was revamping highly visited content to make it easier to navigate and to ensure users are getting all the information they need, in an engaging way. Partnering with the Travel Security Manager for the rich content, I turned three Travel Security webpages into 12, eliminating the lists and link farms and turning the pages into helpful and curated resources for users.
Before: Travel Security and Resources
After: Travel Security and Resources
One of many other areas I focused on based on organizational priorities was the Fulbright Program pages, turning one page into dozens, rewriting content, creating scholar profiles, integrating a search tool, and creatively tying in stories of Fulbrighters past and present.
Before: Fulbright
After: Fulbright
Results
Within a year of this redesign and launch, traffic increased 230%, bounce rates dropped, and overall time spent on pages increased. There is always work to still be done, but phase one was a success.
Bonnie C. Shea 