On Saturday, Feb. 4, Drake launched its new homepage and revamped look and feel for the top four sections (primarily those pages targeted at prospective students) of the website.

Over the last eight months, Information Technology Services (ITS), University Communications, and the Office of Admission have been working to update the design and technology behind the top-level webpages with the following goals:

• Refresh the web technology with better responsive design and web accessibility.
• Expand the homepage strategy to provide more information up front for prospective students and their families.
• Revamp the web design for increased readability and close coordination with printed recruitment materials.

The updates were tested externally with prospective student and parent groups, as well as internally reviewed by President’s Council, Deans Council, and other leadership groups around campus.

This milestone represents the first phase in a number of web improvements being implemented this year. It is important to note that the pages affected by this first phase are mainly the prospective student targeted pages. More relevant to most of campus will be subsequent stages of this project. After the homepage launch, the Terminal Four Content Management Software (CMS) will get a major version upgrade, which will add performance improvements and the ability to edit pages on mobile devices. The final phase will be  to upgrade college/school and department templates.

Special thanks to everyone involved in the project thus far from the IT Infrastructure and Application Services Teams in ITS; our designers, photo/video, and writers in University Communications; and the entire Admission team.

—Jeremy Sievers (x2795)
Director of Web Communications