Rice to introduce new ‘audience-driven’ home page

Rice to introduce new ‘audience-driven’ home page
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BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

Universities
use their Web sites to serve a wide variety of audiences
— from providing information to students, faculty,
staff, alumni and others, to marketing itself to prospective
students. The conundrum is how to address the highly individual
concerns of many audiences with a single home page.

Rice will take
a new approach to that this fall when it introduces its
new “audience-driven” Web site, which will direct
each group to a page custom-designed for it.
The change has been made possible through use of xCatalyst,
a Web-based content management system created by ESX Engineering.

“From the
perspective of the information technologies used, this project
represents a significant change in Rice’s Web infrastructure,”
said William Deigaard, director of Educational Technology,
a part of Information Technology, which is providing the
hardware and system administration. “This system will
provide an interesting and complex set of capabilities for
managing and delivering Web-based information to a wide
and varied audience.”

The system will
address two major challenges: managing content and dealing
with the manifold purposes of a university site.

The content management
system will allow the owners of information to quickly and
easily keep their content accurate and constantly up to
date.

“Our goal
is for administrative staff in each unit to be able to update
their own sections,” said Suzanne Stehr, managing editor
for Rice’s Web site, who is spearheading the Web site
project. “And updating is so easy in this system that
if you can use Microsoft Word, with very little training,
you can manage your Web content.”

Rice also will
be able to be more effective in meeting the needs of its
many audiences.

“The typical
one-size-fits-all model may work for a commercial Web site,
which has one audience — customers,” said Terry
Shepard, vice president for public affairs, who conceived
the new site and whose division oversees the look and feel
of the top tiers of the Rice Web site. “Universities
have so many components and purposes — teaching, research,
administration, recruiting, communicating with alumni and
donors — that no one page can serve all those well.

“We also
recognize that different groups prefer different style and
design — faculty and undergraduate students come to
mind. Rather than continue to force everyone to live with
a compromise, we want to give each group a page customized
for it.”

First-time visitors
to <www.rice.edu>
will be asked to click on a menu to identify themselves
as a: General Online Visitor; Prospective Student (Undergraduate,
Graduate or Business), Current Student (Undergraduate, Graduate
or Business), Faculty Member/Researcher, Staff Member, Rice
Alum, Continuing Studies Student, Journalist, or Donor/Prospective
Donor.

That will automatically
open a “gateway” — a Rice home page whose
design and content is aimed specifically at that group’s
interests. As software compiles data on actual experience
— what visitors to these pages most seek — the
links will be adjusted accordingly.

“This is
a new way of thinking about the Web, where the audience
decides where its interests lie,” Stehr said. “Listening
to your audience is the basis for every good marketing plan.
This is Rice’s way of listening to its audiences.”

The xCatalyst
system already is in use on two sections of the Rice site.
The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and the
School of Continuing Studies began using it in the spring
semester for content management, online event and course
registration, interactive calendars and marketing.

So far, it’s
worked quite well for both schools. “It gives us the
capability to fully manage Web content for the first time,”
said Mary McIntire, dean of the School of Continuing Studies.
“The new enrollment system helps us manage inquiries
and registrations more efficiently.”

Debra Thomas,
director of public relations for the Jones School, sees
xCatalyst as a “total solution for creating an interactive
community with our numerous audiences, handling event registration
and offering a variety of marketing tools.”