By Kiara Catanzaro
News Assignment Editor
The university webpage, SBU.edu, has been renovated and rebuilt under a new content managing system. Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president for university relations, was responsible for organizing the new construction of the website.
“The main reason we decided to completely rebuild the website was to maximize search engine optimization,” Sinsabaugh said. “The previous site, although it had some great features, wasn’t capable for optimization, and there was no way for us to fix it so that it could meet the standards of the Google search engine algorithm.”
According to Sinsabaugh, it’s necessary for the university to focus on search engine optimization.
“An example of search engine optimization is to see whether or not the URL’s on a website are considered friendly,” Sinsabaugh said. “If you clicked on the history department on our previous website, the URL wouldn’t be indexed under Google.”
This caused problems in the previous content management system, because if someone wanted to search for history departments in the Eastern U.S., St. Bonaventure’s program wouldn’t be listed. Students wouldn’t know the school offered it, according to Sinsabaugh.
“It made more sense for our team to start the website over from scratch and rebuild it rather than fix every minor detail,” Sinsabaugh said. “It also allowed our team to construct and organize the architecture of the site so that students will find important information easily.
According to Sinsabaugh, the team who helped build the website consisted of a partnership between the Office of Marketing and Communications and the Technology Services team. Students can also expect an update to the my.sbu.edu page because it isn’t formatted in the new content managing system like the St. Bonaventure webpage.
Content designed for internal audiences like staff, students and faculty was moved to my.sbu.edu. The majority of content on the university page is designed for external audience such as alumni, family and prospective students, Sinsabaugh said.
Plans to update website have been in operation for almost a year, but the rebuilding of the site began officially in June.
“Once we decided that we were going to start with a new program, we planned the new development for about a year,” Sinsabaugh said. “After we chose a new managing system in April, we began building the new site in June. We had a goal of completing the site in August, which was an ambitious effort, but we are happy that we were able to complete the site by the end of September.”
Sinsabaugh said it’s important for the university to have an updated website in order to reach out to prospective students, alumni and families of the university.
“It’s been a labor of love and there is nothing more important than the university website regarding identity, marketing and communication,” Sinsabaugh said. “We hired staff to create multimedia components that will be incorporated into the site, including videos and publications that will make our web presence more interesting to our audiences.”
Sinsabaugh said she is appreciative of the team that worked consistently to develop and complete this project.
“If it weren’t for the team of people we had working long days and nights all summer long, we wouldn’t be able to have this project completed this timely,” Sinsabaugh said. “It is because of their dedication and steadfastness that the website was a success.”
Students discussed positive reactions to the updated that were made to the website.
Sierra Nutt, a sophomore education major, said the website offers a better representation to the university.
“It’s better for the university to have a more modern and efficient website that allows students to access information easily,” Nutt said. “The previous website caused difficulties with finding academic information.”
Other students commented on the layout and updated pictures.
“It’s nice looking at the website and knowing that there are current students represented on the website,” Emily Jo Manchester, a sophomore Spanish major said.
