University News

WIU to Unveil New Website Aug. 4

July 29, 2014

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MACOMB, IL - Western Illinois University will unveil its new website design Monday, Aug. 4 at wiu.edu.

The website will provide a new look, and also feature a new responsive design technique, which will improve the way the website is displayed on various sizes of monitors and mobile devices.

"We are seeing a significant increase in the utilization of mobile devices as users access our website," said Jeremy Merritt, coordinator of University Technology Web Services. "The new responsive design of the WIU website will help ensure that prospective students are able to access our complete website content regardless if they are browsing on an iPhone/Android phone, a tablet/iPad or their desktop or laptop computer."

Richard Chamberlain, executive director of University Technology, said the Internet Technology Advisory Committee (iTAC), made up of University faculty and staff across multiple departments and disciplines, worked on the redesign efforts over the past year to come up with the new design, navigation and technical build.

"iTAC's redesign sub-committee evaluated peer websites, looked at trends in higher education and used website usage analytics during the redesign process," Chamberlain said. "Over the last year, the design has been reviewed and modified based on suggestions from iTAC as a whole and the President's Leadership team, but a key feature of the new site design is that it is mobile ready."

The new WIU website design will take effect during the afternoon of Aug. 4. The website will be unavailable during portions of the day as the changes are put into place.

"Western's web professionals have been working diligently behind the scenes for the past few months preparing their websites for the new design," Merritt said. "That being said, with upwards of 80,000 web pages on wiu.edu, improvements on some sites will be ongoing after the Aug. 4 launch date. Preparing existing pages to utilize this new responsive design can be a time-consuming, challenging endeavor, so we appreciate the University community's patience as our web professionals and content providers address issues as they are found."

Feedback on the new design can be provided via a contact form that will be linked from the new wiu.edu homepage after Aug. 4.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing