FAQs

The UTA website is the most public-facing expression of our mission, goals, values, quality, and success, and it is essential in recruiting talented students, faculty, researchers, and staff. UTA is positioning itself as the University of the future—our website must reflect that.

The current design has been in use since 2010 and has served UTA well in that time. As UTA has grown rapidly in recent years, our website infrastructure has expanded with it, which has splintered the visual experience and decreased navigability of the site. Additionally, the past decade has seen significant underlying technological advancements and new trends in marketing. Our current website has not evolved to keep pace with those changes. We heard feedback on the current site from users and have based the goals of this project in part on that feedback.

To ensure our website is reflective of the first-class work of UTA and that it serves our primary target user—the prospective student—to its fullest capacity, a new enterprise content management tool, Sitecore, has been selected to provide improved usability, engagement analytics, mobile/multichannel adaptability, and user personalization. The site-wide page redesign, combined with new content guidelines, will help better ensure the website is cohesive, reflecting the unified purpose of the University.

It is expected this redesign will result in the following: increased student enrollment and retention, improved brand recognition, improved marketability, optimized navigation and search, enhanced audience personalization, and improved usability.

The target customer and goals for the website modernization are based on an extensive research phase involving 20 sessions of interviews with 81 total participants of faculty and staff stakeholders representing diverse groups across campus, as well as end-users including students, alumni, and parents.

The consensus from the discovery sessions was that the current website was not reflective of UTA’s goals or brand, prospective students are the most critical site visitors, navigation was confusing, the brand experience was inconsistent, and the current content management system was confusing and unreliable for the public-facing website.

Intended business outcome No. 1 of the web modernization is increased enrollment and student retention. The strategy for making our content marketable and accessible to prospective students stands to serve all variety of audiences by providing them with a streamlined, cohesive web experience.

Sitecore was selected by a cross-functional team from UTA including representatives from the campus, administrative units, University Advancement (UA), and the Office of Information Technology (OIT). The selection team also consulted with many other institutions to establish the criteria for the best fit for UTA today and into the future.

Of the products reviewed, Sitecore scored highest in key criteria identified for UTA’s needs. Namely, it has a streamlined infrastructure that makes it easier to use for content authors and website managers. For example, once an element or web widget is created in Sitecore for any area of the UTA website, all departments will be able to adapt the element to their webpages without having to enter a from-scratch production process. Additionally, Sitecore offers training and best-practice programs to ensure users can put its features to effective use.

Sitecore has the technology and structure to address the shortcomings of the current website. The templates that will be used will reinforce consistent branding—resulting in more effective engagement—but still empower departments to add customizations that reflect their character and mission.

Sitecore also captures more insightful analytical data than what is currently available, which will give departments a more comprehensive understanding of their audience’s behavior in order to more effectively market UTA to them.

The project has been split into waves. The first wave will be migrated in August. A broad timeline is available for the remaining content that will be migrated in subsequent waves; more details will be available following the first wave migration and an evaluation of the process.

Websites in the first wave were selected based on diversity of content and broad audience to provide valuable insight for subsequent waves. The smaller group provides a manageable workload with minimized risk, while still informing the overall project. Websites in the first wave were also determined to be top-level, high-traffic pages that should concurrently adopt the same user experience established on the homepage at the time of launch.

To order the migration of remaining content, we are developing a prioritization model based on factors such as 

• Business impact
• Content readiness
• Availability of migrating department's/college's resources
• Operational calendar

Please see the project timeline for details outlining the first wave migration as well as the broader, tentative timeline for the subsequent waves.

If you have questions on the migration schedule, please send them to the web modernization team at webredesignteam@uta.edu.

Websites in the first wave were selected based on diversity of content and broad audience to provide valuable insight for subsequent waves. Websites in the first wave were also determined to be top-level, high-traffic pages that should concurrently adopt the same user experience established on the homepage at the time of launch.

The following websites will be migrated to the new platform in August 2019:

• UTA Homepage
• Campus Map
• Visit Us
• Research
• Student Life/Affairs
• College of Business
• Giving
• Admissions
• About Us
• Academics
• News
• Orientation
• Provost
• For Parents

For the first wave of web modernization, UA and OIT are leading the project with the partnership of an external vendor, RightPoint, which will provide creative and technical assistance based on extensive experience in initiatives of this magnitude.

After the completion of the first wave, UA and OIT will collaborate with the remaining colleges and departments to complete the web modernization initiation for UTA.

Questions or comments can be sent to the web modernization team at webredesignteam@uta.edu.

Departments will be asked in the future to inventory their current web content, make edits, and/or write new content within provided content strategy guidelines, and then migrate that content into Sitecore. As part of the decision to separate public-facing content from internally focused content (“operational content”), departments will also be asked to migrate their operational content to a new Cascade template: the Faculty and Staff Resources portal. 

We’ll also be requesting that departments review the new web content strategy and attend training sessions for Web Standards and Sitecore use to ensure their staff is fully informed and prepared to participate and contribute to the goals of the web modernization.

To mitigate excessive impact on department resources, OIT is hiring students who will be assigned to help migrate content to the new enterprise management system.

If you have questions about your department’s involvement in the web modernization process, please send them to the web modernization team at webredesignteam@uta.edu.

Knowledge Services will provide training on writing for the web and managing content in Sitecore. We are establishing a stronger support system by increasing web support staff, streamlining the support process, and increasing training opportunities to ensure content authors and web managers can effectively and efficiently participate in achieving the goals of web modernization.

Additionally, there will be a support structure in place with a combination of UA and OIT to help with the adoption of the new tool during and after the transition. Department web points of contact will be provided with content guidelines to ensure they are able to maintain the responsibility of keeping content fresh and up-to-date within the new designated tone, voice, and strategy of UTA’s website.

To ask about the support resources that will be made available for content authors, please contact the web modernization team at webredesignteam@uta.edu.

To ensure web modernization points of contact (POCs) can anticipate and plan for next steps, we have created a project timeline that establishes near-term action items for wave one POCs and next steps to anticipate, while also mapping out a broader timeline for the campus population.

The workbook is based on the Keep, Kill, Edit audit of your site’s webpages and will help categorize webpages for improved searchability of the website. The page tables—generated from the categorizations in the content workbook—will help POCs begin the process of organizing, editing, and writing webpage content.

With a project of this complexity, it was anticipated there would be fluidity in deadlines. Launch dates have been carefully considered based on the resources and readiness of UA, OIT, Rightpoint, and web POCs while trying to mitigate interruption to business operations.

Based on the current status of the project, there are updated, planned launch dates for the first wave migration.

Sites migrating in the first wave of web modernization will begin the deployment in August. The breakdown is based on considerations about student experience as classes begin in the fall, as well as readiness of content and website templates.

The following websites will be migrated to the new platform in August 2019:

All schedules related to the web modernization are subject to change based on resources available and preparedness. The web modernization team will send appropriate updates to POCs and update the web modernization website to reflect any developing changes.

As we work to streamline the user experience for the target audience (prospective students), we want to streamline the experience for faculty and staff, too. To do this, we are separating public-facing content from internally focused, operational content.

Content deemed operational during the content audit (Keep, Kill, Edit) process will remain within the current management system, Cascade, and will appear within Faculty and Staff Resources—a new web infrastructure dedicated to streamlining faculty and staff operational resources.

The Faculty and Staff Resources portal will be accessible from the UTA homepage under “Faculty and Staff.” Faculty and Staff Resources is not an intranet and will not be behind a login screen. It is a centralized location for faculty and staff to access information needed to perform their job efficiently and manage their HR information.

Your main departmental website can direct users to operational content in Faculty and Staff Resources, if you choose. Operational content will be categorized by department within Faculty and Staff Resources.

It is recommended that departments begin identifying operational content that should be placed within the Faculty and Staff Resources portal. This includes things like certain department-specific forms and procedures or employee information resources.

Additionally, departments should identify their non-target, public-facing content (NPTC)—content that must be public for legal or policy reasons, but is not intended for the primary target audience of prospective students. NTPC includes items like the campus safety plan, ADA and ADAAA information, and pay plans and job descriptions. NTPC can live in Sitecore or Cascade, with departments having a certain level of discretion based on the path they would like users to take to find a certain item of NTPC.

The decision to separate content between two management platforms (Cascade and Sitecore) was based on the needs of our faculty and staff. To ensure staff members are prepared to migrate and maintain content in both systems, there will be mandatory trainings offered for both Sitecore and the upgraded version of Cascade that will house the new Faculty and Staff Resources portal.

Web Standards are being implemented to provide procedures and guidelines to operate and maintain a high-quality, marketing- and service-oriented UTA website presence, including a coordinated presentation of accurate and important information for constituents. This will help prevent the splintered identity issue that is present throughout UTA’s current website.

Though departments are expected to operate within Web Standards throughout their website(s), we understand there will be occasional instances in which exceptions should be made.

We’re currently establishing the exceptions process and are planning to leverage the existing ServiceNow tracking system to quickly triage, route, and resolve exception requests.

University Advancement will approve new web designs and deviations from brand-related Web Standards. Information on how to submit Web Standards exceptions will be made available at a later time.

Yes, departments will be asked to identify a Web Captain, or point of contact, for their website(s), and those individuals will need to complete training before using Sitecore. 

Training that has been or will be offered to prepare web captains for the migration include:

• Content Author Training – May 13-14
  • This training teaches contributors to create and write more effective online content that serves the goals of the new UTA website. Rightpoint, the external web modernization partner, will provide training on web writing practices and editorial guidelines. The training also introduces POCs to editorial style guides and related standards for the new website.
  • Please contact webredesignteam@uta.edu with questions about this training and related resources if you were unable to attend.
• Marketing Training – May 22 & May 24
  • This training will advise web POCs on how to organize content in Sitecore for effective marketing of UTA and its departments.
  • Please contact webredesignteam@uta.edu with questions about this training and related resources if you were unable to attend.

Additional training on Sitecore and the updated version of Cascade that will be implemented for use with the Faculty and Staff Resources portal may be scheduled at a later date. The web modernization team will reach out to web POCs directly for scheduling, and information on the training sessions will be posted on the Timeline page.

Note: Some training will have seats limited to designated POCs due to the availability of the web team and the external partner. To inquire about accommodating additional representatives from your department, please contact webredesignteam@uta.edu.