Site Redesign and Web Author Training
2021 – The Women’s Educational Society (WES) is a donor-funded organization that gives scholarships to 21 Colorado College students. Contrary to their name, WES recently began offering scholarships to students regardless of sex or gender identity. Although WES was established in 1889, the Board of Managers wanted the modernize the site to communicate that the organization was, and is, still relevant. As of November 2022, the WES site is still a work in progress. I’m continuing to work with the WES Board of Managers to develop a content strategy to keep the site fresh and engaging.
Since the main web authors are part of the WES Board and are not tech-savvy people, I kept the content formatting simple and use more evergreen images. This way, the content on the WES site did not need constant media updates, layout changes, or navigation changes. Instead, the web authors would ideally only be updating small text sections and replacing images in a set page layout.
Challenges
The WES site never had a dedicated web author team, leading to
- mismanaged content and asset files,
- convoluted page organization,
- overcomplicated layouts,
- web accessibility violations, and
- unresponsive web design.
Solutions
The redesign of the WES site consisted of more than just redoing its appearance. I had to consider how the site will be maintained and updated throughout its lifetime. To accomplish this, I worked with the WES Board of Managers and the CC Communications & Marketing web team to
- create responsive and visually appealing pages that were also easy to maintain,
- conduct and record extensive training sessions so future web authors knew how to navigate the CMS,
- decide on main calls to action for web visitors,
- simplify page layouts with an updated version of Bootstrap, and
- highlight the individuality and achievements of WES scholars.
