communicode develops new website for FH Südwestfalen

The University of Applied Sciences Südwestfalen commissioned communicode with an extensive relaunch of the website. In doing so, the information design, the layout and the technical architecture of the website were fundamentally renewed. With immediate effect, the website can be accessed on the web with a completely new appearance.

The University of Applied Sciences Südwestfalen provided communicode with the Corporate Design; the new website was to be oriented towards this. Based on this foundation, communicode supported the entire creative development process - from the wireframe to the layout. The website now appears in a friendly modernized design. In addition, a netbook version of the website was developed. This version optimally utilizes the screen height of mobile devices. Information-irrelevant page elements are hidden.

Content management: FirstSpirit™ to maintain the marketing site.

Some changes were also made at the technological level. The new website is based on the FirstSpirit™ enterprise content management system. The CMS can be used to store, manage and maintain all the website's content. This process is taken over completely by employees or students of the FH Südwestfalen. FirstSpirit™ is particularly suitable for this because its simple operation means that it can also be used by editors without programming knowledge. Publishing times are reduced to a minimum.

Clear navigation structure for maximum usability.

The FH Südwestfalen is formed by a network of a total of four locations. With the previous website, these locations shared a common start page. The start page served as a guide: Here, the user could select the desired location; all location-specific information was then displayed. The new website aims to communicate more clearly that the universities of applied sciences belong together. An innovative navigation structure was created for this purpose. Comprehensive content is displayed for all locations in a summarized form. If site-specific information is also required, this can be displayed via individual tabs. In the CMS, the information can be assigned to the respective location in the simplest way using drag and drop. As before, the user can orientate himself on the hierarchical navigation of the website. However, the new website also offers another option: all sub-navigation points are directly accessible via quick access popup. This allows the user to navigate in advance to the desired menu item without having to click through from page to page.

Additional features for a care process without effort

Many additional features simplify the care process for FH Südwestfalen employees. For example, employees benefit from a personnel database that has been linked to the CMS. This makes it much easier to maintain personnel information. Furthermore, several search engine connections were implemented, which can be controlled by the CMS. Thus, the new website of the FH Südwestfalen offers an optimal technological basis for a fast and easy editing of all contents by the employees and a high usability for the website visitors.

"Our challenge was to offer target group-oriented navigation across four different university locations. At the same time, decentrally maintained information was also to be meaningfully integrated into the overall concept. communicode has found an optimal solution for this", Christian Erbe, project manager at the FH Südwestfalen, is pleased to say.