A new homepage for the University's external website launches today, Tuesday 3 May 2011.

The page has been produced by the ITS Web Team in collaboration with the Communications Office. The external homepage is arguably the most important page on Warwick's website: it's had over 4 million external visitors in the last year and is often the first page they see and from which they form their initial perceptions of the University.

The current homepage was designed in 2007 - a long time ago in website terms - alongside the launch of a new design for all University web pages. The current design was a deliberate move away from the 'directory' style of homepage that we'd had until then, with links to everything we thought visitors might be looking for, to a more 'story' based design which allowed us to showcase timely, interesting content about our activities (gallery of previous homepage designs). We still think that that's a valuable part of what our homepage should do, but we'd also like it to do more for us; since 2007, our rich media and social networking presence has expanded considerably, so we'd like to represent that, and we'd also like to better signpost the most important information and services that our visitors look for. Fortunately for us, web technologies have improved significantly since 2007, and we think it is now possible to include better, clearer navigation and search, and a directory, as well as our main, story-driven content, without making the page too large or too complex to use.

The page has a fixed width design and horizontal navigation which allowed us to take full advantage of the design opportunities this layout affords. The width has been chosen carefully so that the page will work for the majority of our visitors (98.58%) and the new homepage has been optimised to minimise load times, be accessible, usable and function on a variety of devices.

The new homepage design has allowed us to try out some new ideas for layout, typography and navigation which we hope will eventually feed into the designs we use for all our web pages. In the coming months we will carefully monitor how the homepage is being used by visitors to help inform future developments of our whole web presence.

Alongside the development of the new homepage, refreshed study pages for prospective students have also launched. To reflect the importance of the student experience these pages are centred around three experience themes: 'Study', 'Life' and 'Future' and feature some of our current students talking about what their Warwick Experience means to them. Please see screenshots below of these new pages.

Vice Chancellor, Professor Nigel Thrift says:

"I am delighted that we have launched a new design for our external homepage - with over 4 million external visits in the past year, this is arguably the most important page on our website where many of our external stakeholders form their initial perceptions of the University. Our strategy sets out our ambition to be a world leader in research and scholarship and I am pleased that our new homepage showcases and reflects this ambition. Similarly, our new Experience Warwick pages reiterate the high-quality and distinctive student experience we offer to all our students."

Give your feedback on the new external homepage (sign-in required)

The screenshots below show the current external homepage alongside the new design, as well as examples of the new refreshed study section (click on the images to enlarge):

Previous external homepage:

New external homepage:

Previous Study section:

New Study section - Experience Warwick: