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Take a look at Kleins new website, and youll notice clear section headings, consistent text colors and fonts, concise information and a comprehensive tool to help prospective students find the majors they are interested in. These features enable easy navigation and access to information, creating a seamless user experience.

In a vast internet landscape it can be difficult to establish a distinct digital presence. Thats where Temples web collaboration center (WCC) comes in. Since 2016, it has been tasked with improving the infrastructure of the universitys web presence by ensuring it contains accurate information, displays a consistent brand identity and uses a single content management system (CMS).

You know youre at a Temple site no matter what school youre looking at, said Rhoda Charles, associate director of web content in Strategic Marketing and Communications. Temple has a great presence here in Philadelphia, and going forward people beyond our region can use our site as the key to getting to know us.

Prior to the existence of the WCC, Temples web presence consisted of hundreds of independently operated websites, which meant millions of web pages published using dozens of different CMSes. Important academic information appeared in multiple places with sometimes inconsistent or outdated information, creating a headache for all members of the Temple community.

The WCC is a collaborative effort of teams from both Temples Information Technology Services (ITS) department and the universitys centralized communications department, Strategic Marketing and Communications. ITS creates web services; the web technology team codes and develops tools; the user experience (UX) team conducts user research; web content producers write web page copy; and project managers organize it all.

It's great that we are leveraging core Temple systems and data to drive real-time information on the web, said Joshua Wharton, director in Information Technology Services. This collaboration between Strategic Marketing and Communication and Information Technology Services led to an immediate and substantial jump in interest in Temples programs and is setting the university up for future success.

One of the WCCs most important projects has been to transition degree program information to a university degree search tool to make it easier for prospective students to find it. In partnership with Temples 17 schools and colleges, the WCC is in the process of migrating academic content from roughly 100 sites to this one centralized tool and hopes to complete the migration by November 2023, with Klein College of Media and Communication and Fox School of Business having recently made the shift.

Drupal 9 is the central CMS being used. It is an open-source CMS that allows users to directly log in, manage their content in a user-friendly interface and publish real-time changes. Working with a few schools and colleges at a time, the WCC has assisted these campus partners through increasing the visibility of programs in search, ensuring programs are properly vetted through the universitys data hub, and benefiting prospective students by providing web-friendly, easy-to-read, actionable content.

Weve established a foundation that allows Temples digital presence to speak with the same voice and visual language thats reflective of Temples broader brand expression, said Tom Cassidy, senior director of web technology in Strategic Marketing and Communications.

The WCCs work has significantly improved the universitys online presence and user experience. Temple ranks high in search results for many different keywords, as well as for schools and colleges and certain topics.

How all these pieces work together and look alike creates continuity and a great experience for users, said Olga Dressler, associate director ofUX strategyin Strategic Marketing and Communications. Theyre finding us more easily and feeling more confident that theyre getting the information theyre looking for. Research shows that people before were having trouble finding information because of the inconsistent and differing sites, but now users can complete the expected tasks and see we have a modern, consistent experience.

Schools and colleges benefit from the WCC as well by eliminating the cost of an external vendor to build and update their webpages, playing an active role in the development of their content and presence and maintaining their individual look and feel while still falling under the general Temple brand.

This spring, a new financial aid websiteFinancing Your Educationlaunched, creating more transparency early in the enrollment cycle around financial aid types and the financial aid process for prospective students and their families.

In addition to finishing the degree program pages and continuously updating the content and framework, the WCC is working with Temples various administrative units to get them on Drupal. The teams ultimate goal is to bring every Temple page onto it.

What we do on the web enhances what we do elsewhere within our marketing and advertising, Dressler. The way we make decisions based on data and research is not how a lot of other universities approach similar work. Were a unique presence in higher education.

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Temple's web collaboration center strengthens brand and user ... - Temple University News