Kaiden Pope
Reporter
On Thursday March 15, Parkland’s new website went live.
The process for creating the new website began in 2016 and cost roughly $175,000. The new website was created primarily by Parkland staff and by Surface 51, a local software company.
Although much of the website was built by Parkland programmers, it is a customized website so Parkland was not able to handle the size of the project by themselves. Software is used that allows the website to be built according to templates, as well as customizable pages.
Seamus Reilly, Parkland’s vice president for institutional advancement, coordinated the project.
“The new website is organized a little differently than the original website,” Reilly said.
Reilly explained that while the previous website was organized by department, the new website is not.
“Websites used to be a repository of everything in the institution,” Reilly said. “But now, websites are being used more directly to engage students and the community…Much of our website now is targeting our external audience, like prospective students and community members. We’ve got a number of landing pages directed towards people…who are looking to learn about [Parkland.]”
Reilly says the new website has less lengthy information included compared to the old site. Much of the information that had previously been in long wordy descriptions is now in links. This offers a more intuitive and user-friendly way to search through Parkland’s website, according to Reilly.
Reilly said that the programmers and marketing directors who run the site are looking to use email and social media to get information to people directly, rather than leaving it on the site for people to find.
Some resources offered through Parkland, such as the college newspaper the Prospectus, do not have pages on the new website. Instead, the Parkland website offers a link to the separate site where the newspaper can be found.
Reilly explained that the website is set up in landing pages of key interest such as science or the arts, instead of a list of academic departments. Students and community members can look up their interests and find what Parkland has to offer.
The new website also uses more visuals to show what is going on at Parkland. Videos and still images of students and student activities scroll across the screen to try to entice visitors to each page to look a little closer at what Parkland has to offer them.
In a poll of students, it was found that 75 percent of students polled did not know the website had changed. The students said they almost never go on the main Parkland website, instead sticking to my.parkland and Cobra.
Of the students who were aware of the change in the site, 50 percent of the students had found out through a classmate or friend.
“It’ll take some time [for people to notice],” Reilly said. “We just flipped it on a Friday, we didn’t announce it or anything. We do have a ‘Current Students’ section on the website, and we’re hoping that students will use the website to get a sense of what’s going on in the college. We’ve got the scrolling events, and we’re hoping it can give a sense of the vitality of the campus.”
Reilly said he will continue to do usability testing and profiling of students to see what else can be used on the website. He hopes to make it more user-friendly and to use it to help students connect more with the campus.
To see the new website, visit parkland.edu.
