Client
The client, United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corporation (SP) – works diligently to create connections between the diverse, high-performing workforce of the minority education community and private industry to address the nation’s imperatives. The goal of SP is to provide Minority Institutions (MIs) with capacity-building opportunities; the government and private industry with access to a talented and diverse workforce; and individuals with the experience, exposure, mentoring, and development they need to have successful and empowered careers.
Requirements:
- To redesign SP Website to accommodate their restructured business verticals
- To facilitate the use of the Content Management System to display their abundant content
- To make the website social media friendly
Solution:
SP’s previous website was cluttered with a lot of irrelevant information, making an information search very difficult. SP restructured their business verticals and the new design had to show the verticals very clearly. MMG staff, after meeting with client, set off to design the site to illustrate the four categories (Students & Faculty, Minority Institutions, Government and Private Industry) and ensure that they were clear to site visitors. Categorization helped the user navigate the site accurately and saved them a lot of time while searching for relevant information. MMG followed a color combination for each vertical to maintain the consistency across the website. The colors were carefully chosen keeping the SP logo in mind.
The entire content before the login was controlled by the content management system (CMS). MMG team decided to use CK Editor as the CMS due to the user friendly nature of the editor. By using the CMS, the site, with its abundance of data could be built in a very short time and the data could be controlled and managed by the clients. We built the entire approval and version control system for CMS giving clients the ability to switch back to the older version of the page if needed.
SP has a significant presence on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin and WordPress. MMG had to make sure that the site we redesigned for SP was social media friendly. We displayed the icons of all the social media sites and integrated those sites with the new SP website. We embedded Youtube videos in a manner that the latest video uploaded on Youtube would always show up on the home page of the website.
Major Achievements:
- A modern looking, web 2.0 based, social media friendly website built in less than 2 months
- The new website improved user navigation and also helped users find relevant information in a shorter time
- Clients gained flexibility in editing/adding content on the website in a user friendly manner
