Deliverables and Timeline

Timeline

There are several phases of this project: Discovery and Strategy, which includes two days on Seattle University’s campus; Information Architecture; Visual Design; Front-end development; Development, User acceptance testing, Content Migration, and Launch.

These milestones and general timeline will be added to our project timeline and phases after our project kick-off meeting on Friday, September 9th. Our current goal is to go live by the end of 2023.

Watch for periodic updates in SU Today as the progress continues.
Timeline Graphic for Redesign

The Work So Far

During fall 2021, SU partnered with Eduvantis, a marketing strategy consulting firm that works with institutions of higher education, on an audit of the university’s website. Based on the report coming out of the audit, the university decided to move forward with a redesign. A working group involving members of Marketing Communications, ITS, Enrollment Services and the Provost’s Office was assembled for the redesign. Its members include:

  • Scott McClellan – Vice President for University Affairs
  • Melore Nielsen – Vice Provost for Enrollment Management
  • Travis Nation – Chief Information Officer, Vice Provost for Information Technology
  • Trish Henley – Associate Provost of Graduate, Online, and Professional Education
  • K. Francesca Nisco – Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Brand Management
  • Eli Voigt – Creative Director
  • Gaurav Mandan – Director of Web Strategy and Development
  • Victor Chimenti – Web Developer
  • Rosie Sabaric – Marketing Operations and Projects Manager

Seattle University engaged in a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process for the redesign, development and deployment of the website on the existing TerminalFour content management system (CMS). OHO Interactive, was chosen as the university’s partner.

 

Current Phase: Implementation

July through November

Activities include: Installing the new code base.

Priority Pages Content Refresh

Activities include: Refreshing of content for top 200 pages, Content freeze/plan to manage content that must be updated before fall term, identification of "stories" and interviews needed.

Content Freeze 

Activities include: No new content submitted to site, urgent content requests submitted via content request form.

 

Future Phases

Quality Assurance/Bug fixes

Activities include: Planning, Testing, Bug Fixes.

Content Migration

  • Programmatic migration: For consistently structured content 
  • Migration from a data source: For syncing with other sources across campus(faculty directory, course catalog etc.) 
  • Manual Migration: Our new site will likely reflect new thinking around information Architecture, which means new content structures. We will have to manually re-enter this content to match the new site structure.

Launch

 

Past Phases

Discovery and Strategy

September through December

Activities include a governance survey, a stakeholder survey, on site discovery sessions with OHO Interactive, a summary of the stakeholder meetings, content inventory and audit, Google Analytics review of the existing site and summary of findings, Terminalfour technical discovery meetings, compilation of findings and strategy road map.

Content Strategy, Information Architecture

November through April

Activities include: Overall content strategy for the site defining how storytelling and dynamic content will work, website governance plan, sitemap, wireframes, and content templates.

Visual Design

January through April

Activities include: Creative kickoff, Visual design concepts, responsive design, and visual design style guide.

Front-End Development

April through June

Activities include: HTML/CSS responsive themes, user acceptance testing.