The University of Connecticut’s Office of Technology Commercialization’s (OTC) main objective is capitalizing on Connecticut’s investment in world-class facilities, research and people to support the formation of new technology companies and jobs. OTC is comprised of four programs that collaboratively work to spur innovation and entrepreneurial activity in Connecticut.
Background:
The OTC turned to Digiwize to redesign their website, but perhaps more importantly, strategically plan the direction, brand position and technology used to make their website a viable, useful tool the program could use to promote their messaging, expert researchers and pull the four programs together to more effectively position the organization to key target audiences.
The Solution:
In order to begin a cohesive, tangible redesign encompassing the above direction, a clear strategy was laid out. This process involved planning the user experience, navigation and interface design. Digiwize also planned for the growth of the site, both from a technical and marketing position, making sure the site would scale up successfully as the traffic and marketing initiatives grew. Finally, Digiwize worked with members of OTC, interviewing a multitude of faculty, staff, students and looking to existing “log files” to understand the current traffic of users coming to the site.
One of the main goals of OTC was a unified brand with each of the four programs differentiated with its own look and feel. While they each needed to look similar, they each needed to standout and present their own mini-brand. Therefore, the final look and feel of the website was designed to be clean, simple and professional. The main objective involved modernizing the site, making it a vibrant and comfortable destination for visitors.
The new OTC site was built and developed on the a content management system (CMS). Moving the site to CMS gives OTC staff (students, interns, faculty) the power to manage their entire website. No software is required. Some of the main features that Digiwize provided are the ability to add / delete pages, administrative controls, multiple editors, smart forms for collecting data, insertion of images, files (PDFs), videos, podcasts, Flash and RSS publishing. It comes with built-in blogging, Google analytics for measuring traffic and automatic site structuring to control the navigation and customer experience.
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Benefits:
A Killer New Website:
The ultimate benefit for the OTC is a new, vibrant website that effectively targets key audience members with important messaging about the programs and its expert researchers.
One Cohesive Brand:
Digiwize created a consistent, modern website that effectively ties the four distinct programs of the OTC together while concurrently providing a new platform to build future messages, targeted web pages, videos feeds and a blogging platform to share news, stories and build a more devoted following.
Content Management:
The new OTC website is now on a Content Management system that allows OTC personnel control of their website, including page navigation, uploading of videos, images, files and pod casts as well as administrative controls to add editors and subscribers.
