Boise State University has reimagined our web presence from the ground up — from a fresh new look that captures the boldness and energy of Boise State, to an infrastructure that provides a solid, yet flexible foundation that prepares us for the future.
The new BoiseState.edu goes live today, and marks an important step in the process of moving all university websites to the new system. In the coming days, weeks and months, thousands of pages will be migrated into the new site, and new features and improvements will continue to be added.
The mobile-friendly homepage is aimed at Boise State’s most crucial audience — prospective students and their families. This is a group that our analytics continually confirm is among the chief users of the university’s digital welcome mat. But the new structure is designed to use a sophisticated and prominent search function and targeted navigation to assure all of our audiences reach their destinations quickly and easily.
The MyBoiseState portal, meanwhile, is specifically designed and continually improved for existing faculty, staff and students.
Boise State’s Office of Communications and Marketing partnered with Boise State’s Office of Information Technology to build a robust migration system and a world-class cloud-based infrastructure, and with digital design and development agency Modern Tribe for a feature-rich, state-of-the-art web system. With the launch of the new website both projects have now joined together seamlessly.
“I would like to thank our vendor partners, Modern Tribe, Siteimprove, and Cludo, for collaborating with us to solve difficult problems and for bringing expertise, skill and creativity to each challenge,” said Teri Williams, director of web strategy. “I owe a sincere debt of gratitude to our Boise State project team who brought years of experience, skillfulness and countless hours of hard work and dedication to bring this vision to a reality. Your willingness to take on the tough challenges of this project, and your commitment to excellence has not gone unnoticed.”
Here are some of the key features of the new site:
Search: Your Key to Boisestate.edu
No longer will you need to sift through bloated mega-menus or long indexes to find what you’re looking for. Our new state-of-the art search tool utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve relevance over time by analyzing search patterns and adjusting rankings accordingly. Because no machine is perfect, we also will listen to your feedback and consistently optimize our content so that you can find the relevant information you need intuitively, quickly and easily.
User-Centered Design
Whether you call it usability, interaction design, user experience or design thinking it’s all about designing a system that is intuitive and easy to use. Whether you’re a student, alumni, faculty, staff, donor or friend of the university, we considered your needs first and foremost.
Accessibility
Our website needs to be available and accessible to everyone regardless of disability or device used to access the website. This redesign represents a large step forward in our ongoing efforts that give members of the public and members of the university community full access to information on our site.
A Content-Based Approach
From our new advanced publishing tools based on WordPress, to dynamic data and user-generated social media, content and media take center stage as we endeavor to provide you with the most up-to-date, relevant information when you need it.
Desktop to Mobile and Everything in Between
We know our site needs to perform well on mobile devices, tablets and desktop machines. By considering the opportunities and challenges of each device we strive to deliver a seamless user experience no matter which device you choose.