Preview UMBC’s Homepage “Refresh”

On Friday, August 28, UMBC will launch a “refreshed” version of its homepage in order to provide a better user experience for the variety of visitors that use the page.

“Our last full redesign launched in August 2006 and since then we have been challenged with keeping an increasing amount of content organized on the page. The new page provides new, clearer content areas for a cleaner look. We also want to give users access to the many ways people can connect with the UMBC community through our social networking sites,” said Eleanor Lewis, senior communications director.

The new homepage was designed by Michelle Jordan ‘93, with input from UMBC’s Office of Institutional Advancement (OIA) and Creative Services, as well as Collier Jones in the Division of Information Technology (DoIT).

UMBC’s homepage refresh highlights:

• Audience navigation was moved from the left side of the page to underneath the panoramic campus life image to free up space for new content areas
• A new Community section on the lower right side of the page provides information about UMBC’s social networking sites
• The black tool bar above the panoramic campus life image now includes links to the UMBC Campaign  and giving information as well as our sustainability initiatives and research
• The What’s New section has been renamed Headlines and has moved to the left side of the page in order to allow for a larger number of stories
• The Events section now includes a link to the myUMBC calendar in order to provide more information about campus life
• UMBC featured stories are now on the left side of the page and the section has been redesigned to make it easier for users to scroll through each story
• Announcements that are posted in the column between the homepage feature and Events/What’s New column on the current UMBC homepage have been reorganized into two sections in order to better define the type of information presented: Announcements and Did You Know?

During the 2006 UMBC homepage redesign, OIA, Creative Services and DoIT worked together to refocus the UMBC homepage on the needs of external users, and made myUMBC more useful to internal users through richer content and self-service options.

If you have a comment about the UMBC homepage you would like to share, please e-mail elewis@umbc.edu.

(8/24/09)