Case Study: Citrus College
The Customer
Serving over 11,000 students, Citrus College--the fifth oldest community college in the state of California-- was seeking to modernize its online presence through the development of a new website. The new website needed to be engaging, easy to use, and designed to incorporate the needs and priorities of all of its audiences-- internal and external users comprised of Citrus College faculty and staff, potential and current students and their parents, and members of the greater community—as well as consistent design and navigation throughout the site. Just as important, Citrus College needed its website to support the College brand, reflect what the institution is today, and accommodate where the College is heading in the future.
The Challenge
Like other multi-departmental institutions, Citrus College’s website had encountered several problems over time—lack of updates to department web pages due to staff turnover or lack of staff technical experience; antiquated website development software; and reductions in IT staff.
“The college’s web environment was scattered, and spread over four sites among four departments,” said Citrus College’s Chief Information Officer, Linda Welz. “There was a lack of consistency with the look and navigation of the pages. The governance of the website lacked a coordinated single point of contact, and department web developers and instructors performed the content updates using programs such as Dreamweaver and Homesite,” she continued.
Citrus College not only needed its website completely redeveloped, but it also needed a website solution that would allow for non-technical department staff to easily update web pages, so that the IT staff could concentrate on maintaining the college’s overall site.
When seeking a company that could deliver website solutions, Welz turned to other community college chief information officers for advice—the overwhelming referral: SectorPoint. “We chose SectorPoint because of their familiarity with community colleges, experience with Microsoft SharePoint, as well as their competitive pricing and recommendations by other community colleges,” said Welz.
Noting that other companies presented overly complex and costly options, Welz said that SectorPoint’s experience with Microsoft SharePoint— a reliable, stable, easy-to-use and proven content management system—along with their experience with developing other community college websites was what helped set SectorPoint apart from other companies.
The Process
SectorPoint worked in collaboration with the Citrus College Chief Information Officer—along with a committee on the site’s design, information architecture, and content migration strategy—and provided all project management services, wire-framing and visual design of all site templates, including the institutional home page, landing pages, and content pages, and intranet pages. Working in collaboration with a committee comprised of Citrus College’s president, Public Information Officer, two deans, IT staff, and additional stakeholders, Sector Point developed several design and information architecture options, from which the committee made its selection.
Among the highest priorities of the College were the following:
- The new site needed to be engaging, easy-to- use, and incorporate the needs and priorities of all of its audiences: internal and external users comprised of Citrus College faculty and staff, potential and current students and their parents, and members of the greater community.
- Consistent design and navigation, including a consistent user interface on the home and sub-level pages of the site, while providing an appropriate level of flexibility in layout that provided several options, particularly in regard to landing pages and event pages.
- Timely and dynamic content
- The content management system needed to facilitate ongoing site maintenance and updates with in-house resources, including flexibility in accommodating new content, such as events on campus and marketing/communication campaigns.
- Support the College’s brand—visually and architecturally---and reflect what the institution is today, and accommodates where Citrus College is heading in the future.
Welz noted that SectorPoint—specifically, CEO Jon Cornelison—gracefully navigated the college’s internal challenges associated with change management, including showing department the flexibilities with their own department pages in performing content updates , including ways that they could customize their pages. For example, the Athletics Department has a dynamic news page that is constantly updated with story teasers and pictures, while the Student Services page immediately guides new and enrolled students to the services they need most.
Delivering Excellent Results
In addition to a well-designed, architecturally sound website, the implementation of SharePoint has provided Citrus College website results that were not present with their previous website. Due to the web-based content management system provided by SharePoint, and the ease for department staff to update content, Citrus College’s website content is constantly refreshed—ensuring that campus meetings and events, class schedule, and governing board information are constantly refreshed. In addition, the new website, intranet and content management system also provided the following results for Citrus College:
- A dynamic updated schedule platform for the job placement office allows for automatic updates
- An intranet site that allows for timely updates to Governing Board information and minutes
- Visually compelling, audience-driven, highly interactive website design
- Improved navigation and overall page flow, including an improved menu system
- Functional SharePoint branding
- Content migration
- Centralized event calendaring
- Faculty/Staff directory
- Integration of a new student jobs database
- Development of a theater website: SectorPoint designed and developed the theater’s new website, which is consistent in design, architecture and branding with the College’s website, while also reflecting the creative external audiences that visit the site.
- Development of an Athletics website
- Training of all faculty and staff on using the SharePoint program
- Ongoing support and maintenance: According to Leigh Buchwald, Citrus College’s Network, Central Computing, and Telecommunications Supervisor, “SectorPoint’s technical support is always available and timely, their support services are better than we can do internally—their response is not only timely, but they also provide solutions and resources that help us use our products better.”
In the college’s recent WASC accreditation report, Citrus College was commended for its “excellent, comprehensive website, [which] includes a decentralized departments-driven system for updating information on a continuing basis. This allows campus users (and others) immediate access to a wide variety of reports and data.”
Going the Extra Mile
“SectorPoint’s CEO, Jon Cornelison, always makes it a point to come down and visit Citrus College and check on how the product is working. His attention to customer service and detail are reasons why SectorPoint is a website development leader,” said Welz.