Design Selection Process

After two months of review by hundreds of individuals (you!) and many, many campus constituencies, the W&M Web Redesign Advisory Committee announced in February 2008 the future W&M Web Design Suite.

How was the decision made?

mStoner created three new design concepts for www.wm.edu. Each concept consisted of a homepage design and a second level or "landing page" for departments/offices.

Note about viewing the design concepts: When you click on the links below, you will see photographs of the three homepage concepts. Click anywhere on the photo for the next design in the sequence:

Concept One
Concept Two
Concept Three
Now take a look at our current W&M homepage...

The re.web project team met with faculty, students and staff to facilitate discussion and gather feedback. Many of the communication and design professionals at W&M were consulted, and mStoner extensively surveyed prospective students. The design concepts were also posted on the re.web project blog for public comment.

After initial discussions about the designs, two of the concepts were enhanced. mStoner conducted another survey of prospective students and the re.web project team showed these revised concepts on campus.

The Web Advisory Committee carefully reviewed all of the feedback and recommended concept one to the Provost and President. In February 2008, W&M unveiled its new web design.

During February, March and April 2008, the new W&M design suite was created using the design concept selected by the campus. Graphical and design elements were enhanced and modified to develop layouts for everything from news articles to photo galleries to academic department homepages. The original design suite included a transparent global navigation bar that was anchored to the bottom of each photo.

In May 2008, the Arts & Sciences Dean's Office and the Dean's Advisory Council requested a new location for the global navigation bar in the web designs created for academic departments. Many in Arts & Sciences were concerned about potential confusion for visitors to Arts & Sciences sites. Read the related May 18, 2008 blog entry.

Provost Geoff Feiss asked the re.web team to relocate the global navigation bar to the top of the new W&M designs. To preserve the full benefits of global navigation, the re.web team decided to relocate the global navigation bar to the top of all page layouts beyond the W&M homepage. Read the related May 19, 2008 blog entry.