It’s a new look and feel for the NUS Biz website featuring updated navigation and contemporary design features, making a more engaging and user-friendly experience.
“The aim was to give the homepage a less cluttered feel,” said Bayu Prasetyo Nugroho, Manager, Corporate Communications and the webmaster. Bayu also headed the web development team, which included Arwin Galianto, Assistant Manager, IT Unit and designer Daphne Chua, Assistant Manager, Corporate Communications.
The project started about a year ago, and the first stage involved collecting user feedback on the old site through a survey. Creating a new user experience and interface came next.
Daphne recalls many users complaining that the old website was too wordy and they could not find their desired information quickly. She was in charge of designing the user experience and interface for the new website, as well as its content structure.
“Our web analytics also showed that users clicked away to other pages too soon upon entering a new page,” she said. So Daphne categorised text into titled sections and added images wherever possible to give ‘visual breaks’ to a page that contained too much information. Some of the newly added web functions, such as tabs and carousel sliders, also aided in condensing and hiding parts of text-heavy content.
Once the design was confirmed, the team set to work developing the backend. First, the team built a HTML template based on the new design. Once done, Arwin focused on integrating the template into the WordPress theme on which the new website is based.
“The modular nature of WordPress makes it easier for users to update their pages for their programme offices and departments with a simple click and drop,” said Arwin.
Arwin was responsible for setting up the new site’s backend Content Management System. He was also migrating the data from the old to the new production site, which would go live as the new site.
The development team felt that the migration stage was one of the most challenging parts of the project. For instance, the team had to test for bugs such as non-functioning links at the production site. “It is a manual process to look for the bugs as you search link by link,” said Arwin. During the migration process, the team also had to ensure that content on both the old and production sites were updated simultaneously. “For example, there were faculty who were promoted during the past year and we had to update their information on both sites,” said Bayu.
As the new NUS Biz goes live, the development team believes the new site puts the School on par or ahead of international business schools’ homepages. The new site also incorporates SEO features to improve NUS Biz’s visibility during education-related web searches.
“The new website comes across a lot neater, simpler and ‘visual-based’ to retain users’ engagement level,” said Daphne. “We hope users can find their information quicker and have a better browsing experience.”