Before you rewrite your website, start with the big picture
You know your website needs some attention. Maybe the menu has grown unwieldy, pages have accumulated over the years, or you’re not quite sure whether visitors can find what they need.
It’s tempting to start rewriting pages. But before you change the words, it helps to step back and look at the site as a whole.
Academic Affairs Marketing offers website optimization consultations for units across Academic Affairs to help you understand what you have, clarify what your site needs to accomplish, and develop a manageable plan for improving it.
Start with your site’s purpose
Your website doesn’t need to do everything.
It is one part of a larger NAU web ecosystem, and understanding where it fits is an important first step in deciding what belongs there.
We’ll begin the consultation by looking at that larger ecosystem—how NAU’s different web properties work together, the audiences they serve, and the role your site plays in helping visitors move through that experience.
For example, college sites can provide an outward-facing view of the college and its broader community, serving audiences such as alumni, donors, community partners, and others interested in learning more about the college. Rather than duplicating detailed academic program information available elsewhere, they can highlight the college’s identity, impact, people, research, news, events, and opportunities to connect.
Department and school sites provide greater depth around their academic programs, including faculty, research, facilities, student experiences, and other information that helps prospective and current students learn more after discovering a program through NAU’s recruitment and Degree Search experiences.
Other Academic Affairs units may have entirely different audiences and goals. Their sites might support professional programs and partnerships, provide specialized resources or services, or communicate the work of a particular university area. The same principle still applies: understand who the site serves, what visitors need from it, and how it fits with information available elsewhere at NAU.
Once that’s clear, it’s much easier to decide what belongs on the site—and what doesn’t.
See what you already have
You don’t need to inventory your website before requesting a consultation. We’ll do that part for you.
AAM will provide an inventory of your existing website pages so we can look at the site together. That gives us a starting point for identifying content that may be outdated, duplicated, difficult to find, or no longer aligned with the site’s purpose.
It can also reveal something that’s easy to miss when you work with a website every day: how much content has accumulated and how visitors have to navigate through it.
Create a more consistent path
Navigation isn’t just about making one website easier to use. It’s also about creating consistency across NAU’s academic web ecosystem.
As students move from discovery to connection and deeper engagement, they may visit several NAU web properties—exploring academic possibilities, comparing programs, and seeking more detailed information about a program and the academic community around it. Their journey isn’t always linear, but each site should make it easy to understand where they are, find what they need, and continue to the right next step.
If every college, school, and department organizes similar information differently, moving through that ecosystem creates unnecessary friction. A more consistent menu structure helps reduce that friction. Familiar labels and organization help visitors know where to look for information, even as they move between different academic units.
Based on your site’s purpose, audience, and existing content, AAM will provide menu recommendations that align with the broader academic web ecosystem while still accounting for the needs of your unit. That may mean reorganizing existing pages, consolidating related information, reconsidering where certain content belongs, or identifying gaps that should be addressed.
The goal is a website that makes sense on its own—and feels like part of a connected NAU experience.
Build a roadmap for what comes next
Once we’ve established the site’s purpose and recommended an organizational structure, we’ll use the inventory to develop a roadmap for content updates.
The roadmap can help your unit identify what should be updated, consolidated, moved, added, or removed and provide a more manageable way to approach future content work.
Instead of looking at individual pages in isolation, you’ll have a clearer picture of how each piece contributes to the site as a whole. That foundation can help your unit prioritize its work and prepare for future content optimization.
Most importantly, you’ll have a plan—not just a collection of webpages you know need attention.
Ready to take a fresh look at your site?
You don’t need to have a redesign planned or know exactly what’s wrong before asking for help. In fact, figuring out where to start is part of the consultation.
Units across Academic Affairs can request a website optimization consultation by completing the web consultation request form on the AAM website.
We’ll start with the big picture, look at what you have, and build a practical roadmap for where to go next.