Written by Tatyana Phelps, Managing Editor

Students who visit the VSU homepage may have noticed that things look a bit different than they did when the Spring 2015 semester ended.

“This is an exciting improvement to our university’s first impression,” Keith Warburg, assistant director of creative services, announced in an email to VSU students when the new webpage was going live.

There have been several changes made to the homepage. One of the first things visitors will notice on the webpage is the large video slideshow. The new slideshow displays what is happening at VSU for admissions, news and announcements.

“(Creative services) work in the same division as the vice president and all the folks at admissions, advising and in the registrars office to try to coordinate everything we’re doing in a marketing and communications perspective for the university with our enrollment folks,” Warburg said. “We just try to make sure we’re doing everything we can new students here and to keep the students that we currently have.

“On the other side of the coin, we really wanted to look at who are audience was,” Warburg said. “We realized that the homepage that we were using was trying to show all things to all people. So, to have all the links to faculty and staff, all the way to a current student all the way to a future student. What it ended up being was sort of overwhelming for everyone.”

Other more subtle changes include quick links that take visitors to the pages most often visited; larger links that are easier to read and more mobile-friendly; an improved footer containing links to VSU social media pages, contact information, and popular resources; fewer external links; an updated navigation and much more.

This has been the first major redesign the homepage has gone through in three years. The first start was updating the myVSU page six months ago.

“We last redesigned our homepage in 2012,with a mild color update last year in 2014, and we decided that it was just about that time to kind of take it another look at it to see what works with it,” Warburg said. “Our main thing to look at was to make sure that the website works on mobile, on your tablet, your phone—any different sized monitor that you’re using.”

Although several things are different about the VSU homepage, some aspects are not affected by the redesign.

“While these changes will not affect bookmarks or internal pages, we encourage you to continue using MyVSU as your homepage if you are faculty, staff, or a current student,” Warburg said. “If you are a Cascade user, don’t worry; your pages will not be affected.”

The new homepage design was all the work of VSU Creative Services, including Keith Warburg; Ashley Williams, web designer; Bobby Lacey, web designer; and Gary Kuhlmann, webmaster.

“We’re excited about it,” Warburg said. “We’ve gotten good reviews, so people are interacting with it. I think it’s a huge success.”