In a few months, people who visit www.ncsu.edu will no longer see the same home page that has served the N.C. State community for the past five years.

Instead, the visitors will see a redesigned home page with 100 subpages that is content-rich, visually dynamic and easy to navigate and that communicates the reality of N.C. State, according to representatives for the Website Advisory Committee.

Committee representatives said they want to create a home page that conveys a great University and reflects the character of the community as a leader in teaching, research and public service.

Every month, the home page has 2.5 million hits, according to Debbie Griffith, associate vice chancellor of student affairs. She said that means there are 2.5 million chances a month to leave an impression on viewers.

“Right now we’re leaving a lot of that impression to somebody’s imagination,” Griffith said. “We want to focus on what we want them to know about N.C. State and how we help educate students, help economic development, how we do research that improves lives … It’s a combination of marketing the University, but also helping people find the information they need.”

Last February, Chancellor James L. Oblinger appointed the Website Advisory Committee to make recommendations for the home page’s update and redesign.

The committee hired Ripple Effects Interactive of Pittsburgh in June, which is ranked among the top-25 independent interactive agencies in the country, according to Griffith.

Ripple Effects is a full-service interactive consulting, Web design and technology development shop that relies on a wide variety of specialists.

“They are very well known and we’ve had great interactions with them,” Griffith said. “We wanted to work with an outside company because they bring a wealth of experience they’ve gained with other higher-education clients.”

Ripple Effects recently helped launch the Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt and Cornell redesigned home pages.

“[Ripple Effects] has also provided the view of outside audiences,” Jason Simon, associate vice chancellor of public affairs and marketing director, said. “We oftentimes get so caught up in how a current student, faculty or staff uses [the home page], but so many people use it from the outside in a totally different way.”

To begin the process, the committee did an online survey last spring to discover what people across campus like or dislike about the current home page and structure and how the committee can improve it. According to Griffith, there were 1,800 responses to the survey.

“Some people actually thought [the home page] was fine and other people thought this was the greatest opportunity [we] are missing and that we don’t convey a sense of what N.C. State really is — that it’s just a static home page that never changes,” Griffith said. “We were thinking it’s time to take advantage of that. We felt it’s really important to get student input because they’re big users and we wanted what would appeal to not only us, but to students too.”

Thus far, the committee has designed three templates, called “Action,” “Utilitarian” and “Your Story, Your N.C. State.”

The committee reviewed each design with the campus public relations group and tested the designs with groups of faculty, students and prospective students, according to Griffith.

The three designs will each include the same elements such as resource navigation, utility navigation, a search on each main page and new sections for “campus life,” “about N.C. State,” “new students” and “parents and families.”

There will be an additional page focused on current students that will include things like Technician headlines, different academic services, links to NCSU Bookstores and registration and records, how to get an e-mail account and different career services offered on campus, according to Simon.

The “new students” and “about N.C. State” sections will include links about getting around campus with a car, a virtual tour and other information.

There will also be 100 subpages under each navigation tool. The purpose of the pages is to make it simpler for users to be directed to what they are trying to find, according to Griffith.

“When you click on [a navigation tool] on the current home page, we turn you loose and say ‘find it yourself,'” Griffith said. “We want to make it simple and direct people to the places we think they want to get to [and] present the material more actively.”

An additional “quick links” tool will feature a pull-down list of things people use frequently, such as registration and records and Webmail. Users will be able to customize quick links and pick which elements and navigation resources they want in it.

Griffith said the re-design of the home page is also aiming to reach prospective students since they are one of the main audiences.

The re-designs also all include feature areas such as a link to apply to the University, how to give to financial aid, read news, navigation tools, quick facts about the University and a campus slideshow to show images and give people a sense of what is going on with the campus.

“The first design is very action oriented and we try to use a lot of action verbs in there,” Simon said. “It is a real dynamic page, not just a static page with just copy on it.”

The “Action” design will also include images that appear on the home page that will highlight information about certain people and what they do. The images will be changed regularly about every 3 to 6 weeks, according to Simon.

The next design, “Utilitarian,” has more of a utility design to it.

“It’s more like a news site,” Simon said. “It basically has all the same elements [as the other designs] though.”

The last design, called “Your Story, Your N.C. State,” is a place on the site where members of the community can share their stories.

“Here we try to focus on individual stories that are going throughout campus, build a sense of community and give people the opportunity to share their story and maybe we can use that story on the home page,” Simon said.

The next step for the committee is to post the three designs on the blog Monday. home page users will be able to give feedback on what they like or dislike about each design, according to Simon.

“Our goal is to have these up on the blog and then we want to get feedback from everybody on campus as to which [designs] they like, parts of what they like,” Simon said. “We want to get that feedback and allow it for a couple of weeks.”

So far, according to Griffith, the “Action” and “Your Story, Your N.C. State” designs have received the most positive feedback.

“A lot of people think No. 1 is a good Web page design because it’s got a lot of things going on and a lot of things to interact with whereas No. 3 is really different — it’s clean and it’s like N.C. State wants to be: a little different, a little modern and a little on the edge,” Griffith said.

Simon said the committee should narrow in on a final home page design by the end of the fall semester. It is hoping to do a “soft launch” with the new home page during the spring semester. The soft launch will allow users to get used to the new home page while they still have a link to the current home page.

“We didn’t want to make it a hard switch when things are going on like registration,” Simon said.

The full launch of the new home page will be sometime during the summer, according to Simon.

For now, Griffith said the committee will rely on feedback about the designs and hopes that this project will be successful.

“If we can create a simplified structure and navigation so people get what they want but also learn a little bit more in the process and finding out what makes it special, appeal to prospective students and create a sense of community that N.C. State is, then we will have been successful,” Griffith said.