Website Story: NYIT Transforms Its Online Presence

You’ve likely noticed that NYIT’s website has a new look. It’s sleeker, faster, and filled with informative, engaging content. Nancy Donner, vice president for communications and marketing, explains the strategy behind the redesign, her favorite features, and how the website better serves you and your many devices.

Why build a new website? Why now?

The communications and marketing team had just come off a year where we developed a new visual identity for NYIT focused on our brand’s DNA: technology, entrepreneurship, career-focused programs, applications-oriented research, and diversity. We have dozens of new photos, multimedia, The Box news blog, printed collateral materials, and an ad campaign to reflect this messaging. But what good is having all that fresh material if our website doesn’t show this vibrant messaging and identity? These factors made the timing right for a redesign.

How does NYIT’s new website better serve our community?

The website was built to be “responsive.” That means it offers an intuitive experience across all types of devices and Internet browsers. We thought a lot about how people interact with websites using their thumb to scroll through content on many devices. We also made sure the new website is “high performance,” which means it is lightweight and loads quickly, regardless of where you live in the world and your level of Internet access.

We cleaned up and clarified the site navigation, breaking it down really to three basic navigational starting points, the “triple A’s:” About, Academics, and Admissions. Generally speaking, everything starts in one of these three places.

We thought a lot about our audiences and what they need to get out of the site experience, but we also thought about what NYIT wants them to know. So you’ll notice nearly every page is a combination of lively marketing content that helps explain the university to the uninitiated and basic facts that help give the viewer easy access to the important information they need to know.

Social media is also fully integrated into our site and encourages interactivity and participation in sharing content.

So what are some of your favorite fun things that show off the NYIT brand’s DNA on the new website?

There are so many, but I will point to a few that are visual and easy to see:

Photography throughout. We accumulated nearly 3,000 photos from 13 shoots since early 2015 for various purposes and are using many of them on the new site. Great images that could be closeup abstracts, action “experiential” shots, or overhead drone images impart information and evoke emotion. I am also particularly fond of the creative approach we took with the black-and-white faculty headshots used in the profiles.

The Academics page. This is the armature that the rest of the site is built on. At a glance you can see every program offered by NYIT. This is one good way to simply explain our complex university. You can also use the page’s sort function to filter information by location, degree, school, or area of interest (or some combination of these items). Sorting makes it so easy for prospective students or others unfamiliar with our programs to find customized information.

New “about” animation. This is our 90-second “elevator pitch” about the best of NYIT. The animation riffs on our visual identity’s color palette and square elements. Fun fact: there are 72 videos and eight animations to engage people on our new website.

The campus location pages. One of the harder points to convey to the public is how NYIT is uniquely global. And also that our two New York campuses are similar in what they offer, but different in style. We used drone video footage on the Manhattan and Old Westbury location pages to show the different paces of each campus. Old Westbury is shot in daytime in the autumn. The camera moves languidly across our lush and open campus. In Manhattan, we shot at night using a lot of time-lapsed imagery. The result is high energy and dramatic.

The NYITCOM video on the art and science of osteopathic medicine. We are well aware that attention spans are short. In fact, according to recent research, the average American has a shorter attention span than a goldfish (theirs is 13 seconds, ours is 8 seconds.) And nearly every video we did for NYIT’s new website is short, mostly 90 seconds to 3 minutes long. But sometimes you need to go in depth and let something play out as long as it needs to. Our medical school, which is expanding to a second site in Jonesboro, Arkansas, needs to do just that. This video takes its time and is worth it.

Redesigning a website with thousands of words, images, and videos must take a lot of teamwork. What was the process and who was involved?

We were given a year for this Herculean task. And it was important to involve stakeholders from all over the institution. So immediately we created three committees. We formed an Executive Team and a Web Advisory Group, which had representatives from all seven schools and every major administrative department. These folks met often and served as a liaison to their units to supply content. Our working group included the offices of Communications and Marketing, Admissions, and Information Technology and Infrastructure, who worked daily on the site: writing and editing copy, shooting photography and video, creating animations and infographics, researching and fact-checking information, designing page layouts, coding, and project managing. They are the heroes of this project.

Our every step was guided by Happy Cog, an award-winning web design and consulting agency that has worked with top brands like Ben & Jerry’s, MTV, and Zappos. Happy Cog brought detailed knowledge of best practices and made sure our design concepts progressed on the right path.

We also sought input from current and prospective students and alumni on certain milestones along the way, so we were careful to have focus groups and informal discussions with them to assess direction.

What was your role in this process?

I believe the term is “productive disruptor.” In other words, my job in leading this effort was to encourage everyone to push boundaries and be innovative. But then make sure that innovation was actually achievable, smart, and of course, on budget and on time. This is NYIT’s moment for digital transformation, and we, as a team and a university, need to embrace it.

Now that the new website has launched, what are your next steps?

Our beautiful website is like a garden and needs tending. We’ll be planting it with up-to-date content, pruning out clutter and outdated information, and nurturing it to grow and evolve with more multimedia stories. Stay tuned.

Are you taking feedback on the new website?

Yes, absolutely! We want to know what you think and hear your ideas for improvement. Please take time to explore and experience the new website. Share your thoughts.