After a year and a half of planning and work, Yale Divinity School debuted its new website today. The website is a direct outgrowth of the school’s strategic communications plan and incorporates broad input from faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The redesign project was aimed at accomplishing the following:
Better navigation: The new design restructures content and wayfinding for a better user experience and an easier time finding what site users are looking for. As part of this, the new site separates links based on audience type (e.g. alumni and prospective students) from links based on content type (e.g. admissions and campus life).
Improved design: The new site design reflects the school’s preeminent reputation in theological education, the beauty of the campus, the quality and breadth of academic offerings at YDS and Yale, and the important and inspirational work taking place in Marquand Chapel, YDS classrooms, and the students’ and faculty’s scholarship and artistic pursuits.
Alignment with new communications strategy: Last year, YDS completed a strategic communications plan aimed at bringing greater precision, focus, and energy to the school’s communications. The web redesign project represents a major expression of that strategy. The new site better showcases the distinctive qualities of YDS, the remarkable scholarship and contributions of the students, faculty, and alumni, the relationships between the partners on the Quad, and the advantageous fact that the Divinity School is part of Yale University—in terms of location as well as quality.
In addition to YDS’ communications strategy, the new site took design and content cues from the university’s redesigned site, which went live last fall.
The YDS website redesign project was led by web coordinator Campbell “Brock” Harmon ’04 M.A.R. and communications director Tom Krattenmaker. Working with the Divinity School was the User Experience & Digital Strategy team in the university’s ITS department; in particular, Julienne Hadley, Adriana Corona, and Michael Harris.
To provide feedback on the new site, please send a message to web coordinator Harmon at campbell.harmon@yale.edu.