Georgetown University’s new homepage.
Although the official Georgetown.edu website unveiled its new design June 15, for many students the return to campus has been the first they’ve seen the homepage’s new look. The changes in the website give insight into the new ways Georgetown students, faculty, and prospective freshmen are using technology.
University Information Services (UIS), along with the Office of Public Affairs and Strategic Communications, redesigned the main page mainly to make it more mobile friendly. “We have been seeing increased mobile use and traffic to our site and we knew that Google would begin to prioritize its search for sites that worked well on mobile devices, not just desktops,” said Rachel Pugh, Senior Director of Strategic Communications, in an email to the Voice.
According to the Office of Public Affairs, the website experiences more than 7 million visits each year, with 25 percent of external traffic coming from mobile devices. Over the last year alone, mobile traffic to the site increased by 40 percent.
Visitors to the site might also notice that many student and faculty resources now must be found in new locations. The redesign moved pages such as Blackboard, MyAccess, and Google Apps away from the front page and under a separate tab titled “Tools.” To find pages for the individual schools, visitors now look under “Academics” and then under “Our Schools.”
According to Pugh, this aspect of the redesign gives more prominence to the “Admissions” and “Academics” portions of the site. “Admissions and Academics are the most trafficked areas so we know that prospective students are by far the largest audience for Georgetown.edu,” wrote Pugh. She also noted that, according to analytics, students and faculty are use the main page less often to find their resources. Instead they are going directly to the pages they need from an external site, such as a search engine.
Pugh also elaborated on some possible future changes to Georgetown.edu. “This summer UIS began working with students to on a pilot design for a ‘student portal,’” she wrote. “This would act as a dashboard for students – with some aspects of it customizable to suit individual student needs – putting information and common log-ons all on the same landing page.” UIS and student groups are continuing to work on the development.
