A polished and user-friendly website can make all the difference as prospective students explore what the University of Iowa has to offer them. The quality of sites can also make a meaningful impression on alumni and friends, as well as current students and employees.  

The year 2021 was one of tremendous progress in the UI’s web space, as hundreds of campus sites were revamped and refreshed with consistent branding, improved accessibility, and new tools to help site owners ensure that content is easily found, attractively presented, and well maintained. 

In recognition of how closely the web team’s work was aligned with communication and marketing strategy at the UI, the Drupal web team officially joined the Office of Strategic Communication (OSC) in summer of 2021. In support of this transition, the team completed Scrum training, a framework that helps teams work together to solve complex problems and continuously improve, with each individual earning Scrum Master accreditation. The team also regularly hosts trainings for campus partners looking to utilize web and branding resources and take a strategic approach to presenting their content. 

Fueling brand adoption 

As Iowa embraced a new brand, the web team supported brand deployment across campus by developing Sitenow v3, an on-brand low-code/no-code site-building platform for use by its web partners.  

By the end of the year, more than 600 university websites had adopted the new brand, with upwards of 400 building on the Sitenow v3 platform. In 2021 alone, the relaunched sites included the undergraduate admissions website, five college websites, and numerous other high-profile websites critical to the university’s mission. 

Lois Gray, College of Education director of strategic communications, credits the expertise and support from OSC and the Drupal web team with the college ‘s recent successful web redesign and transition to Sitenow v3, resulting in a much more professional and user-friendly website.

“From developing web content strategy to understanding how to better use metrics tied to goals and improving our SEO, they were with us every step of the way,” Gray says. “They provided helpful group trainings, brainstorming sessions, trouble-shooting advice, and one-on-one consultation and feedback. Our entire team could not have done our work without their expertise and leadership.”

She adds that the weekly sprints, web community meetings, and Siteimprove trainings have been crucial to providing a platform for campus partners to share best practices and learn from one another while ensuring the overall UI brand is strengthened.

“Our team loves the fact that the web community includes everyone from web developers to art directors to strategic communications and marketing professionals, brought together with the goal of creating the most professional, user-friendly website possible,” Gray says. “This is more crucial now than ever with the increasing emphasis on recruitment marketing and becoming a destination university.”

Jason Kosovski, director of marketing and communications for the UI College of Engineering, echoes those sentiments. Through collaborations and consultations with the Drupal web team, the college migrated its large and complex website to the Sitenow v3 platform successfully.

“Not only did the team help us with planning and execution, but their support for an interface that is user-friendly and intuitive positions our college to be more nimble for and response to web updates and requests,” Kosovski says. 

Upgrading the content-management system 

The UI has long used software called Drupal to make and manage its websites. Drupal is open-source software, meaning anyone can download, use, work on, and share it with others.  

The web team and site owners across campus worked in 2021 to move hundreds of websites to the newest version of Drupal, ensuring that sites are as secure and high-performing as possible and equipped with the latest features. In mid-October, the Drupal team reached an important milestone: The number of Drupal 9 sites on campus surpassed the number of legacy Drupal 7 sites, with more than 600 sites transitioned to Drupal 9. These trends will continue and become more pronounced in 2022.   

“The Drupal web team would like to share thanks and gratitude for all the support, leadership, and participation across campus,” says Michael O’Neill, director of web strategy in the Office of Strategic Communication. “None of this would be possible without a strong web community, ITS and OSC leadership support, and the continued investment by developers from the Graduate College, Tippie College of Business, Student Life Communications, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.”

Ensuring site quality 

In 2020, the UI deployed Siteimprove, a tool to continuously monitor for new and emergent search engine optimization, as well as quality and accessibility issues. Today more than 200 users are signed up to use the system, which is covering nearly a thousand campus websites. 

 “If you manage a website related to the university, the web team provides this tool for you and your teams at no cost and regardless of platform, content management system, or framework,” O’Neill says. “Teams that use Siteimprove tend to radically improve the experience they provide on their web properties, often moving their scores from industry laggards to industry leaders in a few short weeks.”