The Next Phase: Home Site 4

Working on day-to-day projects, it’s easy to forget the reason why we’re doing this work: to discover, encourage, and grow the relationships which best support Bates’ approach to learning.

That means every phase of online engagement is part of the greater whole:

• bringing to campus those students, faculty, and staff who can benefit most from this environment
• supporting them in all facets of living, studying,  working, and playing here
• encouraging their lifelong participation in learning and engagement

Now that we’ve developed a blueprint for this work and achieved the first phase of implementation — activating a range of social media services to draw people toward the Bates online experience — it’s time to announce the next phase.

Last week, our vice president of College Advancement, Kelly Kerner, asked us to redevelop Bates’ “home site” … the first 30-60 seconds of online experience during which our first-time visitors make their first impressions of the College.

This is a “surgical” project, in that none of the dozens of microsites and thousands of pages which present deeper, detailed information about Bates will be affected. Once IT’s content management software discovery begins, we will turn our attention to deep content.

In the meantime, we need to capture the essence and core values of Bates in a powerful, concise way. The primary question: “Why is Bates worth your attention?”

As producer and project leader, I’ll keep you updated here on this blog, and I’ll be looking for your feedback, so please subscribe to notifications.

We’re just getting started. More soon.