CLIENT:
- University of Toledo
APPLICATION:
- Web
KEY FEATURES:
- Large-scale updates
- Mobile-first solution
- Third-party collaboration
In July of 2019, The University of Toledo unveiled a dramatic brand update – the first of its kind in more than a decade. The university partnered with a local agency to develop the voice and tone of the new brand as well as some basic visual rules and print component layouts. The university website was not included in the bid, and it was decided that we would update the ~40,000 page website in house.
There were several factors to consider when updating utoledo.edu. The most recent site overhaul had taken place in 2011, and was initiated in order to capitalize on the (at the time) recent responsive web phenomenon. In the eight years since that last update, there has obviously been a shift in our users’ web behavior and expectations. We were not surprised to learn that over 50% of our total web traffic now came from mobile devices, and an even more significant portion of our target audience was browsing on their phones. With this in mind, we set out to design a mobile-first website experience that reflected the updated visuals and voice of UToledo.
Another unique consideration we had to make was that there were over 400 university employees that were trained and empowered to make changes to certain areas of the website – most of whom made changes using a WYSIWYG editor and were not savvy in any coding languages. With a web team totaling six people at the time of launch, we had to be realistic about our governance capabilities, and decided it was best to be as un-disruptive as possible when updating the site. We were able to make several CSS changes that created a totally new and refreshed site experience, while also not jeopardizing the content or content structure our employees had grown accustomed to.