Arkansas State University is in the process of creating the next Astate.edu website which is set to launch summer 2025.

Todd Clark, chief marketing and communications officer and member of the website redesign committee, said the website is the front door of A-State.

“Oftentimes it’s our students’ first experience with A-State, so we want to make sure we’re showcasing the university in the best light,” Clark said.

Clark said a university website lasts five to six years, and Astate.edu was last redesigned in 2012.

The committee is building the website from the ground up with external partner iFactory, a digital marketing agency specializing in higher education. They are also in collaboration with Modern Campus, a company that provides software and web content management services for higher education institutions.

“We’ve just so radically changed in the last twelve years that we had to go back and just kind of, for lack of a better word, blow it up and start over,” Melanie Wicinski, associate vice chancellor for accreditation and assessment and member of the website redesign committee, said.

Justin Coats, a junior computer science major from Cherry Valley, Arkansas, said the current website is good at overall presentation, but does a lackluster job at purveying information.

“I find that I often get lost on it. So when I heard that they were recreating the website I was certainly happy about it, because it definitely needs updating,” Coats said.

Coats said he often goes on the website to look for his class bulletins but can’t find them because they’re hidden so deep within sub pages. He said it’s difficult to find databases on the website unless his professors link directly them.

“The databases and the bulletins are both so important and they’re just kind of sandwiched in the middle of nowhere in the website,” Coats said. “I think that definitely is a symptom of having so many pages that are just thrown about and added post making a main framework of the website, as opposed to considering all of that at one time and then designing the website.”

Priorities for the new website include having program pages with more dynamic information, the ability for faculty to update these pages with ease, an accessible mobile-first design and removing the a-z index.

Wicinski said the a-z index is a crutch for faculty and staff and a well-designed website shouldn’t need one.

“I would die on the hill that we should not have to have an A to Z index,” Wicinski said.

Clark said the biggest issue with the current website is its age and how bloated it is. He said the Astate.edu domain has about 40,000 pages of information.

Clark and Wicinski hosted an open forum to provide an update on the project and share prototype designs.

Jim Washam, Neil Griffin College of Business dean, attended the open forum. He said he wanted to see what the new website was going to look like so he could start planning a layout for the new College of Business page.

Washam said the current website has too much clutter.

“I think building the new website will help us clean out a whole lot of that clutter and streamline things,” Washam said. “So I’m excited about that.”

Clark said iFactory audited every page of content on the A-State website.

“We went through and inventoried our content and audited as a committee to figure out how we can try to really reduce the amount of pages,” Clark said. “There’s no need for A-State to have 40,000 pages. If we can cut that down to 10,000 it’d be great, 5000 would be even better.”

Washam said the website redesign committee should prioritize a combination of design and content to catch people’s eye and lead them to the information they need.

Wicinski said the redesign in 2012 cost over $200,000 and the committee will keep the new website continually updated to avoid having to redesign the website in five years.

To increase governance among faculty, the committee will implement transparent rules, expectations and guidelines for updating the website.

“Modern campus has tools that will remind faculty and staff when content is dated. The new system we’re migrating to will really help us make sure that we can keep this website current,” Clark said.  “If we see a section of the website hasn’t been maintained properly or is way out of date, we’ll know who on campus is responsible for updating that information and we can work with them, work with those people to get updated.”

Clark said faculty and staff can prepare for the website launch by taking a look at the pages they have now, taking inventory of outdated information or broken links, auditing employees, getting involved in building directories and putting together a small team who have ownership accountability for their pages.

The chief marketing and communications officer said hosting the open forums is important for transparency and so the committee can receive feedback.

“The university website has so many different layers and audiences, everything from the department of biological science to the library to the A-State museum, all these users use the website differently and have different types of content,” Clark said. “It’s good to get that kind of open opinion from everyone so, as we move forward with the project, we’re best informed.”

Clark said the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I think people are excited about the new website, the new look and I know our campus users are excited about the ease and functionality,” Clark said.