The strategies and standards that apply to Winona State web properties.
The WSU website is a source of current information, not a digital archive of past materials. In general, examples of student projects, published articles, featured stories, and testimonials should be no older than 3-4 years. If older materials must be retained, then they will be published in OpenRiver.
Information must be "single sourced" by linking to the originating webpage that maintains the details. This has several benefits include easier web maintenance, preventing misinformation, and improving SEO.
In general, web copy and multimedia will follow all brand standards including tone, writing style, and visual style. There are specific colors and fonts used across the public website.
The WSU Website Platform Standards govern the expected practices for maintaining the WSU website to ensure that the university website serves as an effective communication tool.
The WSU Website Platform Strategy sets forth the guiding principles for information architecture, content development, visual design, and site optimization. This is to ensure that the university website serves as an effective marketing tool for prospective students and a primary method of communication for external audiences.
Template blocks are chosen based on the content needs while also considering flow and varied visual design throughout the webpage. The goal is to present information clearly and cleanly – making it easy for the user to learn what they need, while also having a delightful experience.
The WSU website is maintained via a collaborative partnership between MarComm who serve as communications experts and campus departments who serve as subject matter experts.The goal is always to communicate information to our target audiences that is relevant to their needs and in a manner that meets their expectations.
The public-facing website information architecture follows three key principles -- user-centered, intuitive, streamlined -- with the goals to represent WSU as a unified institution, serve multiple target audiences and balance public and internal information.
The page architecture is determined by the site hierarchy and the content needs. Page content is generally built to emphasize high-level themes and critical information at a glance with lead paragraphs and headings.
The overall template design is bright, vibrant, visual, and clean to create a modern aesthetic that uses a lot of white space and large font sizes for easy scanning while scrolling. There are several custom blocks designed to provide visual impact, content organization, or a combination of both.