A fresh look for UVic.ca home page

On Jan. 19, expect to see a fresh look to the UVic home page.

Since the launch of the latest UVic web template in August 2012, we’ve collected design and usability feedback that we’re incorporating into a redesigned UVic.ca home page. It’s a cleaner layout, with large billboard images, prominent UVic Edge elements, a dynamic “story grid,” and useful popular links.

The full-page-width billboards feature high-impact news stories and faculty research of interest to the campus community, as well as strategic audience-specific pages. There will be more student stories and items of value to prospective students, such as campus tours, co-operative education, recruitment information and student orientation. Content and images will reflect the UVic Edge, and epic photos will be used whenever possible, as outlined in the new brand guidelines.

The new home page will be more closely aligned with The UVic Edge throughout every element of the page, and will have direct links to pages on the three main edge ingredients: dynamic learning, vital impact and extraordinary academic environment. There will also be changes to the tertiary navigation (the gray menu on the left side of the UVic.ca website) to reflect this update.

Keep an eye out for the new “story grid,” which will feature news stories and social media. This dynamic grid will be updated regularly to keep you informed of all the latest happenings on campus and beyond. Expect to see everything from exciting student blog posts to informative media releases to captivating YouTube videos.

At the bottom of the new home page we’ve included icons and links to nine of the most popular pages for all of our audiences. A tenth icon can be added to showcase important, time-sensitive items (e.g. student exam period, convocation, IdeaFest).

On Jan. 19, you will see changes to the UVic home page and main UVic.ca audience landing pages only. There are no plans to apply these changes ­to departmental websites at this time, but we will keep site administrators informed about future updates available to units. A more substantial update of the UVic web template is planned for 2017-18.