The past two days we've held sessions to present the process of the website redesign. At the start of the redesign we had two internal goals. First, ensure the redesign was a process, not a one-time project. Second, involve the community along the way.

During the meetings we unpacked five parts of the process that have brought us to where we are:

Partner:

We knew from the start one of the biggest decisions would be to select the right partner. Several nationally recognized firms sent us proposals, and we brought three firm on campus to present their proposals in person. From these presentations mStoner stood out from the rest. The team we're working from their firm has proven to be a valuable partner.

Strategy:

Strategy included three key parts: stakeholder intake, competitor analysis, and testing. We spoke into how each of these three areas informed both the scope of the project and the design of each concept.

Concepts:

Based off the information collected in the strategy phase, three separate concepts were created by three different designers—each taking a different look at a potential Bethel website. During the meetings, we walked through each of these concepts to dig a bit deeper into the process that went into their development.

Feedback:

Lastly, we presented results from the survey that was released to four main groups: prospective students, current students, faculty/staff, and alumni/parents. Based on the feedback from each of these groups, the steering committee selected concept two as the new face to Bethel's website.

There were a lot of great questions and comments discussed during the meetings. If you were unable to attend, scan through some of our past posts for information about where we've been. If you have additional comments or questions, feel free to send me an email (vedmic@bethel.edu).

After sending 35,000 surveys and receiving a record number of responses, the results are in:

Concept two resonated with the Bethel community as the best fit for the new website. High Res

Concept two will be the face of Bethel's new website.

The survey revealed great information about messages, designs, and how they fit together. Plus, you provided helpful feedback on how the concepts spoke to you and how well you felt they represented our community.

Record-setting survey

In the survey process, our community (prospective students, current students, employees, parents, and alumni) set two records for redesign firm mStoner.

First, we hit a record number for survey responses—mStoner has never seen so many people give feedback on a redesign survey. Second, they have never seen there be such a clear consensus—across all groups. 

Some of your general comments about concept two include:

• "It's about the student, the community, and the transformation of a student as a partner of the community."
• "It feels like there is a plan and a place for me."
• "It tells me that Bethel is a process... I really get a sense of the transformation journey."
• "Bethel helps you become who you are meant to be."

A winning combination

When asking questions about messages separately from design, our community had a range of preferences. But when asking about design and messaging paired together, mStoner has never seen a concept score so highly.

The combination of message and design on concept two seemed to have a powerful effect that resonated across our community.

Learn more about our survey results.

What's next

Web Services will work with mStoner to refine and improve concept two until it will serve as the best foundation for the new site.

We'll continue to keep you posted, so check back soon. Finally, a big thank you to all of you who took the record-setting survey—it just shows what an awesome community we have here at Bethel.

Walter Johnson, hall of fame pitcher for the Washington Senators in the 1920s, was asked the secret of his success. He responded simply “You can't hit what you can't see.” Walter Johnson worked to be one of the hardest throwing pitchers the game has ever known.

In the current web site redesign process, Walter Johnson’s words are still true. It will be easy to hit the visual elements of the redesign because we can see them. It will be easy to say “Yes, I love the overlap of those images” or “No, I do not like that color pallet at all”. It will be easy to say “I love the creative content on this page” or “No, that presentation of content is not acceptable”. Those are sensory elements that we see and react to with passion.

What we cannot see are those elements going into the redesign behind the scenes. A completely new architecture will replace one Apache web server with two new virtual servers. It will replace a single application server with four new virtual servers. It will provide load balancing between our servers to keep any server from being overrun. It will provide capacity to for using web tools such as streaming video and Bethel’s own Bubblequest without disrupting our external web site.

Like Walter Johnson, it takes hard work to develop something you cannot see. Bethel’s web site redesign process is moving forward with a lot of hard work on the network team, the systems administration team and the web services team. Network load balancing is in place. New virtual servers are handling the load. New front-end Apache servers are being designed and made ready for service. In other words there is a lot of hard work going on where it cannot be seen to give Bethel a web presence that will be robust and fault tolerant as well as attractive and compelling.