The College of the Holy Cross has launched a new mobile-friendly website, featuring a comprehensive redesign, more photography, and improved navigation to better convey the College’s story to multiple audiences.
The new website was developed to showcase the exceptional academic strengths of the Holy Cross undergraduate experience, as well as the diverse range of opportunities for students on (and off) campus — from creative expression in the arts to highly competitive Division I athletics; from faith exploration and justice work to experiential learning, internships and much more.
The most visible changes to the site include:
A responsive design and infrastructure that automatically resizes webpages based on the screen width and orientation of a user’s device — from a smartphone to an HDTV
Two additions to the main navigation menu bar: “Faith & Service” and “Arts & Culture,” subjects that help define life at Holy Cross
Refreshed copy and messaging on top-level pages
Changes in the site architecture to give visitors and on-campus users easier ways to find information and navigate services and departments.
The design and sharpened messaging was informed by quantitative and qualitative research findings. As part of the redesign process, a campus advisory team was convened to make informed decisions about how to create the most effective site for all audiences. Open sessions on campus were held to gather feedback from students, faculty and staff about what they wanted to see in terms of storytelling, news, photography, video, design and site architecture. The project team included staff from College Marketing and Communications, Information Technology Services, Admissions and Advancement.
The new site has been in the works for more than a year. Holy Cross worked with OHO Interactive, a Somerville, Mass.-based creative services company, on the new design and structure of the site. The last site-wide redesign took place nearly 10 years ago. Last summer, an interim home page was launched and updates were made to top-level “landing pages” to mirror the College’s new branding efforts and “Ask More” tagline. The interim site allowed the College to track traffic to and from the redesigned home page. That, coupled with feedback from campus and external audiences, was used to inform the final design.
The Holy Cross website uses the open-source Drupal web content management system and is hosted on the cloud-based server Acquia.
“The Acquia cloud service will provide Holy Cross with a fully-managed, enterprise-level hosting environment, that is secure, scalable and reliable,” said Christian Santillo, director of web communications. “Acquia will also serve as a Drupal expert to Holy Cross allowing us to quickly evaluate and deploy new features.
To report any problems or errors on the new site and to submit your feedback, please complete this online form.