The Highlander

The newly designed Regis website will debut by mid-February. This site will focus primarily on providing information for external readers including prospective students and alumni. [Click to enlarge]

From the perspective of the Regis University Image Committee, the Regis website (www.regis.edu) is the face of the University to the entire world. While current students tend to use Insite and library online resources, the Regis website is visited by alumni, prospective students, parents, donors, faculty and staff, current students, and the metro-Denver community (who can attend events). A revamped version of the website is tentatively scheduled to debut by mid-February 2006.

Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs, John Hickey, has been working with the Image Committee to redesign the Regis homepage. The Image Committee is made up of the "marketing folks" at Regis who focus on TV ads and the website, Hickey said. Hickey also stated the Image Committee "recognizes that the web is an important marketing tool."

The committee did not use in-house focus groups for their redesign ideas, instead they contracted an outside marketing and web design firm called Amelie. The Image committee recognized complaints of users and their frustration with navigation. "The site was too generic and static," said Hickey. "We tried to be everything to everyone."

Victor Davolt, director of Admissions, says that Regis receives a total of 1,800 applications from all states across the country; therefore Regis needs to have a better web presence in order to cater to these perspective students.

Regis.edu serves the needs of many users. The first and foremost is perspective students, which the new site will primarily focus on. Secondly, the current students, which ITS is gearing InSite towards in their redevelopment. Third, Alumni. Fourth, Faculty and Staff and fifth, the generic public.

The Image Committee contacted a web research firm, Nation Research Center for College & University Admissions to survey Regis' website. Hickey said the first two years of the current website was ranked "about 250 out of 3000 and last year dropped into the low 1000's."

The new website will feature a more graphical interface according to Hickey. There will be 60-70 percent less links than the current website.

Hickey mentioned that the main reason for a static site is due to the fact that departments do not have their own content managers to update the websites, but Hickey said, "we are working towards specific content managers to update websites on a regular basis."

One of the major redesigns will come from the library. Electronic Services Librarian, Melissa Stockton, said "the library is taking this opportunity to make some major changes our own part of the Regis web site. The library pages will not only take on the new look of Regis on the web, but will have a new flow that we hope will make the site easier to navigate and use."

Stockton added, "the new library web site will focus more on subject access to library resources. The different disciplines and degree programs will have all of the appropriate resources listed together on new individual subject guides."

When asked when the site will be active, Hickey replied, "we're now aiming for the beginning-to-mid February. No real problems, it's just taking a bit longer than anticipated. Some conversion components were more labor intensive than first envisioned."

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