College Launches Redesigned Homepage

Westminster College redesigned its homepage, Westminster.edu, to better serve visitors with a cleaner design, more powerful search functions, and ability for prospective students to easily find personalized net cost estimates.

Westminster.edu averages over 80,000 unique visitors and 2.5 million hits each week and had a 97% approval rating by surveyed prospective students. Westminster has enjoyed a nearly 400% increase in applications over the past five years with 4,000 applicants competing for 400 available spots in each freshmen class.

Web Services Coordinator Jonathan Smith and Web Developer William Quigley, both Westminster alumni, spearheaded the project. They evaluated years of usage statistics and trends, consulted with members of the Westminster community, and implemented best practices from higher education and corporate sites to create a more user-friendly website.

"Jonathan and Bill do a great job with Westminster's website," said Mark Meighen, senior director of marketing and communication services. "They make sure the site is easy to navigate for visitors and make it easy for Westminster to provide fresh content that showcases the many accomplishments of our students and faculty. Westminster is blessed with an exceptional faculty who are experts in their fields and collaborate with our talented students on projects that benefit the community. The new faculty profile section allows our web visitors to learn more about this tremendous Westminster resource."

"It's always exciting to provide a new look and feel to our site visitors," Smith said.  "The streamlined homepage is designed to get visitors to the information they are looking for quickly and easily.  Our redesigned search will give our visitors access to site, news release, and directory results with a single search query while our new faculty and staff profiles will provide visitors with specific information related to the on-campus resource."

The development of the my.westminster portal for students, faculty, and alumni has enabled the website to focus on serving external visitors.

One of the newest features is a "true cost calculator" that provides students with personalized net cost estimations and attempts to demystify the financial aid process. The student enters some financial and academic information on a secure site and will receive the personalized net cost estimation within minutes, while also receiving explanations of the differences between grants, loans, and other types of aid.

Contact Web Services Coordinator Jonathan Smith, 724-946-6209 or email smithjo@westminster.edu, for more information.

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