Greetings! It's hard to believe that J-Term 2016 is behind us and the new semester starts this week. As you prepare for the semester ahead, please take 3 minutes to read these important updates.
What's New & Good
- New homepage: Launched the day before Thanksgiving, the new homepage is full of stories, interaction, and calls to action. To date, the "Visit Luther" call-to-action button has received 990 clicks!
- Mega Menu: In order for our visitors quickly to find what they're looking for, we also implemented a so-called "mega menu" for the top navigation. Further, we made the top nav more prospective student-focused by moving links for other audiences to the "Info for" dropdown.
- Stories & Testimonials: We know that prospective students don't want to hear from Luther's marketing department. They want to hear from other students, faculty, staff, and alumni! As such, we continue to produce stories, featuring faculty, work-study, internships, first-year seminars, undergraduate research, alumni, and—coming soon—study away and collaborative experiences. Also, check out student testimonials sprinkled across academic department sites such as Art, Biology, and Political Science.
- J-Term Blogs 2016: We had a lot of fun following along on trips around the world. If you haven't had a chance to take a look at the blogs, it's not too late!
- Website Reviews: The web content team reviews individual websites on www2.luther.edu to ensure accuracy, consistency, and great user experience. Let us know if you are interested in a website review.
Upgrade to Reason 4.6
This week, we will upgrade to the most recent version of Reason CMS. Here are a few updates of note:
- The form builder is improved, and looks a bit different (see screenshot below). For those of you who create forms, please contact us if you have questions.
- The form builder includes the ability to upload files through forms. Yes, that's right! You can now request form users to submit a file through the form and have it stored in the database and emailed to form owners.
- We are now able to embed Constant Contact forms on our website. For example, Sign up for Luther News. Contact us for more details!
- Reason 4.6 also includes some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enhancements and a LinkedIn social account. You can see the LinkedIn feature on several academic websites, including Religion and Physics.
Call-to-Action Buttons
To encourage visitors to our website to take specific actions, we have been rolling out call-to-action buttons across our website. Desired actions include starting an online application and registering for a visit.
Since August 1, 2015, visitors to the website have clicked 15,474 times on these buttons. This is up 132.92% from the same period last year! (Thank you, new homepage!)
As such, we've decided to add the key buttons, "Visit Luther" and "Apply Now" to more pages, especially on the academic department sites. Please contact me if you have ideas/questions related to this.
Important Reminders (Rerun)
If you need to make any updates to a web page, please update the current page rather than deleting and replacing. This includes changing the URL and the title. As long as the topic is still the same, please keep the current page. This ensures that the page redirects properly.
The same thing goes for assets. If you're updating your asset with a more current version of a PDF, for example, replace the file and keep the asset as is.
If you need to delete a page, check to see if there are other pages on our website linking to it and request that the site owners remove the links. This is to ensure that we maintain an awesome user experience.
Finally, remember that your site navigation is not intended to change frequently. If you want to highlight an event or some other temporary action, please contact us for call-to-action buttons, call-out blurbs, or other ideas for featuring this content, rather than plopping it in the menu.
Web Resources
- Web Style Guide: https://www2.luther.edu/style-guide/
- Reason Video Tutorials: https://www2.luther.edu/web-content/resources/reason/
- Web Guidelines: https://www2.luther.edu/web-content/resources/guidelines/
We are here to assist you with all web-related matters. Feel free to call with questions or enter a helpdesk ticket (instructions here).
Thanks for helping us keep our website accurate and timely!