The website is one of the university’s most important communication and marketing tools. With the ongoing increase in complexity of web communications, we must ensure the ongoing need for policies and workflows to manage web communications effectively and efficiently.
This document outlines the strategic priorities, policies, and procedures of campbell.edu. If you have questions regarding this document, please contact University Communications & Marketing.
Web Strategic Priorities
External
- Support the university’s mission by focusing efforts on the following key areas:
- Brand awareness and perception
- Student enrollment
- Giving donations
- Expand Campbell’s reach by creating an on-brand website with consistent design, flexible features, and marketing-driven content to reach our No. 1 target audience: prospective students.
- Continuously improve the usability and accessibility of our website by ensuring:
- User-oriented content that is current
- Logical content structure
- In-site structure and navigation
- Information architecture of content
- Mobile accessibility
- 508 compliance for those with disabilities
Internal
- Reduce website bloat and content redundancy with an improved information architecture, thoughtful navigation, and regular maintenance process.
- Use a common Content Management System and code base across all schools and departments for efficiency and cost control.
- Guarantee stability and effectiveness of the website by resolving technology issues and performing regular maintenance.
- Ensure implementations follow web standards, accessibility, and usability best practices.
Strategic Standardization
University Communications & Marketing must approve, create, and develop all official University websites using the branded templates provided.
Major revisions to the website – including but not limited to site structure, code, design, components, and functionality – require the approval of University Communications & Marketing.
The strategic priorities of the University, brand integrity, site performance, security, and site-wide code base will be considered before these types of requests can be approved.
If schools and departments want to create a new website, start a blog, add additional pages to an existing website, or request new features that require development work or third-party software, a Web Request must be submitted to University Communications & Marketing.
External Websites for Official University Use
External websites or blogs (sites hosted outside of the campbell.edu domain) to be used for official University business, including those created for marketing campaigns, will not be permitted. Please direct all inquiries to University Communications & Marketing.
Third-Party Software Implementation
Third-party extensions expand the capability of the core CMS; however, quality of extensions and compatibility with other add-ons to the CMS are not guaranteed. If not well managed, use of third-party extensions can easily lead to problems in reliability, regression errors in updates, managing the differences between sites that do and don’t use them, testing them, and ensuring a consistent and quality experience for users.
For these reasons, University Communications & Marketing must vet and approve all plugins and third-party applications prior to purchases being made by schools or departments. University Communications & Marketing reserves the right to deny requests in order to maintain and protect the technical integrity of the official University website.
Code Governance
Digital Marketing & Third-Party Advertising
Accumulation of digital marketing vendor tags on web pages can impact site performance in a number of ways, including poor tag design, slow response time associated with the collection servers, tag placement, and the number of tags accumulated on pages.
Requests for third-party code inclusion must be:
- Reviewed by University Communications & Marketing before inclusion.
- Applied in a standardized manner by University Communications & Marketing staff.
CMS-Incorporated Standards
A great many of the technical issues associated with proper website design is implemented as part of the Content Management System, and thus will not be at the discretion of the content manager. These include:
- Sitemap implementation
- URL structure
- Coding style
- Browser compatibility
- Many code aspects of SEO
- Visual identity and style
- Most aspects of layout format and elements
Requirements
- All official University websites should use a campbell.edu website address.
- All campbell.edu websites must use the official header and footer.
- Websites on the campbell.edu domain must follow brand guidelines.
Content Policy
Campbell.edu is user-first. It exists to deliver content that users need to complete an action or be informed.
Writing for the Web
Please see our tips and best practices on writing for the web.
Prohibited Content Topics
- Advertising non-university entities, businesses, organizations or products.
- Content that implies institutional endorsement of entities, businesses, organizations, products, projects or services.
- Content that is inconsistent with the University’s mission.
- Links to pages that are inconsistent with the University’s mission.
Multimedia Policies
Images
Due to copyright laws, images on campbell.edu must be original content or considered public domain (free from copyright). Publishing an image that you do not own could result in legal action.
Keep it professional. Ensure images are reflective of an institution of higher education.
Include alt tags (for accessibility and search engine optimization). An alt tag is text associated with an image. It is not seen by the user, but is readable by search engines.
Directory Photos
The online directory includes official headshots of Campbell faculty and staff. It is important that all images in the directory are recent (preferably within the past five years), high resolution and maintain a consistent look. Headshots can be scheduled via the online form.
Graphics
Graphic content across campbell.edu – including graphics, advertisements, illustrations, infographics, or other artwork – must follow University brand guidelines, be properly formatted, and meet accessibility compliance. Graphic content that does not adhere to these policies is subject to removal from the website.
Third-Party Logos
Use of third-party logos on the University website must be approved by University Communications & Marketing.
Video
Videos uploaded to the university website or University social media platforms must follow University brand guidelines, be properly formatted, and meet accessibility compliance. Videos that do not adhere to these policies are subject to removal.
Videos uploaded to the University website or social media platforms are the sole responsibility of the video owner and should continue to be stored and backed up by the video owner. University Communications & Marketing is not liable for lost video files and is not responsible for long-term video storage.