Starting today, URMC’s public website, www.urmc.rochester.edu, debuts a modified design (please refresh your browser if the site looks unusual) – the first step in a three-part process to truly transform the look, feel and functionality of the Medical Center’s internet experience.
At this point in time, virtually all navigation and content remains untouched; the most noticeable changes appear on page headers (now featuring URMC’s trademark “swoosh” curves) and footers.
Of course, this new look is just a taste of more exciting changes to come. In the months ahead, Web Services will launch an intensive effort to retrain 400-some URMC staff who currently use Contribute’s push-button publishing software to update their department’s web pages. These staff will instead learn Kentico, a true content management system that allows non-programmers to create web pages replete with all sorts of widgets – surveys, simple business web forms (or “BizForms”), calendaring, messaging forums, and more.
As Contribute users acclimate to the new Kentico tool, Web Services will continue work with Marketing counterparts to reorganize online information – changes that we anticipate will better meet the needs and expectations of our diverse web audiences (e.g., current and prospective patients, medical school applicants, and referring physicians).
“As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving parts with this project,” says Director of Web Services Sharon Martinez. “We’ve been busy conducting quality-checks on the nearly 50,000 current pages that we’ll be porting over to the Kentico system, and gearing up for training hundreds of future system users.
It’s exciting, she adds.
“In the end, we hope to deliver a web experience that’s efficient and intuitive for end-users, better empowers departments to manage their own online business needs, and positions URMC’s web presence among the best academic medical center sites in the nation.”
For an in-depth interview with Martinez, which explains the full scope of the ongoing redesign project, click here. To see a map of the project’s three phases — and learn more about the project’s rationale — click here. (Please note: You must be on a URMC network to view some links on this page.)
