Bracknell and Wokingham College new web site, is simply
the best.
Bracknell & Wokingham College serves a diverse student
population of school leavers and adult learners. Delivering courses
in over 30 centres in Bracknell, Wokingham and the surrounding
area, 2009 sees the opening of a new £36 million college building,
and the launch of a new content managed website by Unified
Solutions.
As the majority of learners now use the internet as their first
port of call when researching courses, it became increasing obvious
to the college Marketing team that the old college website was not
fit for purpose. A new website was an integral part of the
redevelopment plan, in line with their commitment to offer easy
access to further education by encouraging school leavers and
adults to make the most of the new facilities and courses on
offer.
The importance of the college’s web presence
was also recognised as a high priority by a range of other
departments within the college and a cross-functional committee was
formed to develop a business case and identify user
requirements.
Siobhan Cronin Marketing and Admissions
Manager comments “The college committee interviewed and shortlisted
potential suppliers. The presentation and proposal put forward by
Unified Solutions was not only head and shoulders above the
competition but was also unanimously endorsed by everyone. The
obvious synergy between the college team and the Unified team was
apparent right from the start, and we drew confidence from
Unified’s extensive experience in the higher education sector. We
knew we wanted an off- the-shelf solution but one which could be
customised to meet our specific requirements.”
A key requirement of the site was simplicity,
not only for the end users but also for the content editors,
including students, to showcase their work. The college wanted a
new look and feel with a navigation that was easy to use,
compelling and that incorporated the new college branding
guidelines. A dynamic search facility that would pull information
from the entire site was essential.
Unified recommended the Alterian WCMS for its
ease of use and scalability. Another important factor was Unified’s
experience integrating with the ebs4 Tribal database, where all
course information is stored. Information stored in the database is
now seamlessly fed into the website and will now be updated in one
location for publishing onto the web and print.
Unified Account manager Patrick Ryan was
delighted with the team’s enthusiasm “The college team
wholeheartedly embraced the InSite™ methodology allowing Unified to
create prototype clickable wireframes using information gained
during extensive usability testing, ultimately producing a state of
the art website that caters individually to the diverse range
of website visitors”
Six distinctive tabs across the home page
identify the main types of potential visitors and direct them to
areas of the website for more specific information. The use of
personas was so successful that it will be used again as new
audiences for the site are identified. Targeted information
appears in boxes on the left hand side and can be adapted to the
specific audience while more general news and contact information
appears on the right hand side of each page.
To find out more about this project and others
like it contact Sales on 01753 775050 or e-mail sales@unified.co.uk