USD Wins Best in Class for New Business School Website

On April 14, 2017, the University of San Diego was awarded Best in Class for excellence in the design, development and implementation of the School of Business website in the University category.

The honor, granted by the Interactive Media Awards, recognizes that the project met and surpassed the standards of excellence that comprise the web's most professional work. The judging consisted of various criteria, including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area — an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

See 2017 Best in Class award certificate.

The Business School website is filled with new features that will help make the information-seeking process easier for prospective audiences:

• A responsive design which allows site visitors to access information anywhere at any time.
• A hero area that features a looping video replay—a USD first. Upon launch the video showcases the USD campus and school; in future iterations this space can be used to showcase the exciting speakers hosted and advancements made in the School of Business.
• A home page "Persona Selector" for our prospective graduate, undergraduate, and current students to learn about school news, events, or programs in a more personalized way.
• A home page "Global Impact" area that showcases locations around the world where School of Business students study abroad and where our Business alumni are living and making an impact around the world post graduation.
• A new faculty and staff directory with filtering, search, research information, and larger photos for learning about the award-winning faculty at the university. A searchable faculty expertise listing is a special highlight to help showcase the backgrounds, experience, and interests of our faculty community.
• A newly enhanced and integrated study abroad system which highlights opportunities for students based on Business program, world region, country, or semester.
• Course description listings fed from the university's course catalog, allowing for up-to-date course information and requirements to be delivered to prospective and current audiences in an automated way.
• A new News Center, Events Calendar, and Blogs site all sharing information about the school, its faculty and staff, and related centers and institutes.
• A social media hub powered by TwineSocial to aggregate the school's content from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
• Newly written and edited content throughout the website, which guided the architecture and the design process for the new site.

The information architecture is strategically organized, and content was mindfully raised from the department and center level in the previous website to the school level on the new website, alleviating the need for students to track information in multiple places to find what they are looking for.

The plan is to use analytics and surveying tools to adjust to the changing needs of our prospective audiences and to allow the site to evolve with those needs.

About the Interactive Media Awards

The Interactive Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement. Sponsored by the Interactive Media Council, Inc., a nonprofit organization of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals, the competition seeks to elevate the standards of excellence on the Internet. For more information visit http://www.interactivemediaawards.com.