UAF will launch newly designed website

June 21, 2016

Carla Browning

Michelle Renfrew
Michelle Renfrew


By Michelle Renfrew
Director, UAF Marketing and Communications

UAF will launch a newly designed home page June 27. The new design is based on higher-education web design best practices and trends, market research, analytics, and user testing.

During spring 2016, Marketing and Communications conducted two rounds of user testing with faculty, staff, students and community members. We also had local high school students critique our design.

A university's home page is critically important to recruiting prospective students — the No. 1 target audience. In today's increasingly competitive marketplace, it is essential for universities to have attractive and clearly understandable webpages with easily navigable information on programs, courses, tuition and fees, registration, and other resources.

Other important audiences use the website, including current students, faculty, staff, donors, funding agencies and community members.

We would like to thank everyone who took part in our testing and gave valuable feedback on how we can better meet users' needs. During the next several months, please let us know if there are any issues to address as a result of the new design.

To access UAF website templates that can be applied to your department, school or program, visit http://alaska.edu/oit/services/webdev/help/.