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 Web site benchmark Reprinted with permission from Ragan Communications, www.ragan.com/wcr.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County Original site launch date: 1994 Most recent redesign: 1999 (home page redesigned in September 2001) Site mission “While there is no substitute for being on campus, the site attempts to represent UMBC to its varied external and internal audiences,” says John Fritz, the school’s director of new media learning and development. “The primary way we do this is by focusing on the information needs of end users through consistent, easy-to-use content, design and engineering.” Site management Two campus departments—Institutional Advancement and Information Technology—share responsibilities for the site. IA develops and maintains the content and design for the home page and top levels of the site. IT provides the network administration, some dynamic content programming and instruction for university departments. Collectively, about six to eight people have hands-on access to the site for content, design or programming capacity. Most site development occurs during the summer and winter breaks. Fritz serves as IT’s coordinator of Web development, but he used to work as IA’s news director—which enables seamless relations between the two units. Also, the teams meet about every four to six weeks and carry on ongoing discussions via a listserv that also includes content providers across campus. Site budget The site eats up about $125,000 in salaries, plus an additional $10,000 each year for hardware and software, Fritz estimates. The budget has remained pretty steady from year to year, although plans for a content-management system may require an increase. Site traffic The site generates about 60,000 monthly visitors, who produce about 300,000 page views—an average of five clicks per person. The average length of stay on the site is about 10 minutes. Biggest accomplishment Fritz highlighted “face-lifts” to the university’s home page and its “myUMBC” campus portal. “The portal has been very popular with students and faculty for academic functions—registration, class schedules, bill payment,” Fritz claims. “Also, technology-enhanced learning grew tremendously last year, mainly because we introduced Blackboard’s online course management tool.” Approximately one-quarter of UMBC’s 400 faculty members and 10,000 students used Blackboard last year. Fritz also points out several new content plays that launched in the last year or so:
The future of the site “Our biggest challenge is content management,” Fritz says. “We basically have a manual, distributed content-management system that is augmented by lots of communication among team members. Our News, Human Resources and Library sites are all dynamically driven, but we need a dynamic application that will allow others to provide input and updates throughout the site without affecting the site’s overall design and programming. We’ve been mulling this problem for about two years, doing a lot of research, and trying decide if we can build our own application or will need to buy one.” Starting in the Fall 2001 semester, UMBC requires all students to own or assure they have access to a computer—“so the university needs to take advantage of this new baseline of access,” Fritz explains. Integrating technology-enhanced learning and back-end business systems with the site’s overall development will be a priority for the next several years. UMBC will also launch more new microsites:
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