Skyline’s website is undergoing a major redesign in order to enhance communication with students and the community.As a part of the Fresh Look project that Skyline launched over two years ago, the website redesign promises to be the most complex and wide reaching aspect of the undertaking. Currently, the college has a very comprehensive website, but it needs to be more user-friendly, structurally upgraded and customized to its outside users, according to various Skyline students on campus.”Websites generally need redesigning every few years to make sure that the site is as relevant and enticing for future students, current students, community and faculty and staff as it can be,” Shelly Hausman, Skyline’s public information officer said. Skyline hired an outside firm, Interact Communications, to assist in the website redesign that has helped other community colleges from all over the country. Interact Communications is working closely with a wide range of people on this project, including The Fresh Look Web Site Redesign Advisory Committee, a group representative of faculty, staff, administrators and students; the Office of College Development Marketing and Public Relations.As a research component to the redesign project, surveys were sent out in order to obtain information from the school’s audiences. According to Wendy Smith, Vice President of the ASSC, the general feedback from the surveys found that the website was boring, hard to navigate and not very inviting to its users.”The web design committee was created to better assist users to navigate through our website and add features that were not available prior,” Smith said. “The reason I joined this committee was to add input on a student’s perspective.”The website redesign should be completed by late fall 2008 and users should expect to see major changes. “The new site should visually communicate how dynamic and exciting the campus is and the great education we have here,” Hausman said. “It should also organize information in a way that makes it easy for Skyline’s varied audiences [future students, current students, online students, high school students, and community & business members, etc] to find the information they need.”The new site will contain PODS [or people oriented designs], which will tailor the site to Skyline’s key audiences. According to Hausman, the PODS will be the gateways to the inside of the site from the front page for different types of users (current students, future students, high school students, online students, community and business, etc).According to Raydan Alhubaishy, a student assistant to Development, Marketing & Public Relations at Skyline, the new website should be better organized and provide a less confusing way to present information.”I think the website is fine, but it should be updated,” Skyline student, Stephanie Lee said. “It is pretty much your standard college website.”Lee also said that she would visit the website more if it had more updates about campus events.”Right now I only use the website for WebSmart,” Lee said. “But I think people would visit more if they had better detail.” If you would like to contribute input to how the new website should look, go online to www.skylinecollege.edu and leave your comments in the eSuggestion box.