In March, the University Executive Board gave the go ahead for a new University website in 2026. We are now nearing the end of the process to find a tech partner to help us deliver it, and the idea is starting to become a reality. At the heart of the work is a vision which will guide us as we build the new website, and a set of measures which will make sure it remains useful and engaging for many years to come.
Our vision
Our new website will showcase Sussex at its best, supporting our student recruitment efforts and demonstrating our academic and research excellence to the world, with user needs at the core.
Our approach to content
To make sure that our website provides a fantastic user experience, our content will follow these principles:
- Relevant – users need to be able to find what they are looking for, quickly
- Accurate – information must be correct and consistent across our website
- Engaging – content needs to be useful or interesting
- Accessible – content needs to be fully accessible, for the benefit of all our users.
A new content model
To bring our content strategy to life, we need to start thinking differently about how we manage and display content – and you might hear the phrase ‘connected content’ which refers to the model we’re adopting.
This model will ensure that content is served up in the right places at the right time, relying on a single source of truth within our new Content Management System (CMS). So we might change some term dates, for example, and any instance of those term dates across the site would be automatically updated. This approach will make it easier to ensure that the content on our website is accurate and consistent, avoiding the multiple cases of out of date or duplicate information that we have now.
A new content governance model
In the past we’ve been good at uploading content to our website, but we haven’t paid enough attention to reviewing, maintaining or archiving it. This has resulted in a website of over 100,000 pages – far too many for users to be able to find what they need quickly - and confusingly based on our internal structures rather than user need or behaviour.
Introducing a new governance model will ensure this doesn’t happen in future. It will provide clarity on the expertise and roles involved in running the website. Content creation and management will be more centralised, steered by user insights and led by experts within the Digital and Creative Media (DCM) team, who will work in partnership with a range of colleagues across the University.
We’ve reached this stage after extensive engagement with staff website users and will continue this process as the project develops. If you have any questions about how the New Web Estate project is developing, please contact the DCM team who will be happy to meet you to discuss. Alternatively, you can email the DCM team, or visit the New Web Estate project page for more information.