New Roanoke.edu and Inside Roanoke websites launch

Roanoke College has launched two new websites — Roanoke.edu and Inside Roanoke (roanoke.edu/inside), an "intranet" for students, faculty and staff.

Roanoke.edu designed for the public
The new Roanoke.edu focuses on promoting the College to the public, especially to prospective families and alumni. During a campus preview, SGA President Thomas Lux '16 was excited about the new design, saying, "The public website shows prospective students exactly what they want to see."

Alumni have also shared kudos about the site. "Very well done. It looks great and, more importantly, it feels great," said Malon Courts '92, a trustee of the College.

Initial data coming back from site visitors looks promising. "The new homepage design has been effective at pulling visitors down the page, and we can see the photo galleries at the bottom getting lots of clicks," said Director of Marketing Blair Garland. "The new academic program pages appear to be engaging visitors better than before, as time spent on those pages has increased."

Inside Roanoke created for the campus community
Roanoke is one of a pioneering group of colleges that are moving service and workflow-related pages off the marketing website and onto a dedicated intranet site.

Based on input from focus groups with students, faculty and staff, the Inside Roanoke homepage features the most common services and links such as email, forms, Inquire and the directory. News, upcoming events, announcements and the dining menu are also prominently displayed.

Everything else is organized under A-Z, which serves as the primary navigation system for Inside Roanoke.

Members of the college community should use Inside Roanoke, not Roanoke.edu, to access college functions and services.

Pride in showing off Roanoke College 
Roanoke.edu gives an authentic view of what it's like to be a student at the College, as many of the video clips and photos were shot by students.

"The content that goes through the site makes me really proud to be at Roanoke, and I've never seen a college website that comes close to comparing with ours," said Lux.