September 2019 – Jesse Earley

26th September 20195th November 2019

The Website Redesign Process: Part 4 – A work in-progress

In Part 1 of this Website Redesign Series, we took a look back at the old web design for the College of Natural Science at MSU , and where I was able to bring the design to during a redesign that began in 2016. In Part 2, we looked at some data points that analytics were showing us, and talked about how those would affect the redesign of the college homepage, and then sketched out what a proposed homepage redesign would look like. In Part 3, we took a look at the technology I’d be using to build the new design. Now here in Part 4, we will be taking a look at the work in-progress, issues I’ve encountered, and what some resolutions have been to those issues.

Just to recap from Part 3, I decided to go with CSS Grid over a front-end framework. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “But Jesse, IE doesn’t fully support grid!”. And you’d be right, but based on our analytics, less that 3% of our website visitors are using IE. In fact, over 90% are using Chrome or Safari.

23rd September 201930th September 2019

The Website Redesign Process: Part 3 – The Technology

In Part 1 of this Website Redesign Series, we took a look back at the old web design for the College of Natural Science at MSU , and where I was able to bring the design to during a redesign that began in 2016. In Part 2, we looked at some data points that analytics were showing us, and talked about how those would affect the redesign of the college homepage, and then sketched out what a proposed homepage redesign would look like. In Part 3 here, we will take a look at the technology we will be using to build the redesign.

Before we talk about technology though, let me explain a bit about my design process (something that is different for everyone). I like to start with a mockup, which is what you saw in Part 2, and from there, I like to start designing right in my browser. WOAH, WOAH, WOAH! WHAT? DESIGNING RIGHT IN THE BROWSER? BLASPHEMY! Or is it?

16th September 201916th September 2019

Halloweekend

It’s been a little bit since I posted a blog entry, so it felt like a good time to do so. This past weekend, Meghan, Riley, my mom and I went to Sandusky, Ohio for a trip to Cedar Point. This wasn’t just any Cedar Point trip though, it was the first weekend of their “Halloweekend” event. If you haven’t been to one of these, Cedar Point goes all out with their Halloween decorations, from erecting graveyards of rides they no longer have, to renaming rides (such as Ocean Motion to Ocean Potion), everything seems to have a Halloween vibe.

16th September 201916th September 2019

The Website Redesign Process: Part 2 – Data driven design

In Part 1 of this article series, we took a look back at the old web design for the College of Natural Science at MSU , and where I was able to bring the design to during a redesign that began in 2016, with an implementation that occurred in 2017. Part 1 concluded by indicating that our analytics were helping to drive the next iteration of the design that I’ve now embarked on…but how is it doing that?

Just to recap from Part 1:

The college homepage has more visits than any other page on the site.
Nearly 3/4 of the traffic seen every month is reported as a “New User”, as opposed to a “Returning User”.
The largest demographic is in the age range of 18-24, followed closely by 25-34.

9th September 201912th September 2019

The Website Redesign Process: Part 1 – A look back

It’s that time again…time to redesign a website!

In my current role as the Digital Media Manager for the College of Natural Science at Michigan State University, which also encompasses front-end design/development for the college, the responsibility of a website redesign falls into my lap.

When I first took this role back at the end of 2016, my first official project was to develop a new design for the college website. The website at that time looked like this: