New look for the UG website

The UG website got a modern look and feel on Friday 16 June. As most of our visitors use a smartphone or tablet, we’ve chosen the ‘mobile first’ approach for the new design, for example in My University and the Dashboard.

So what’s changed?
Only the look of the website has changed. The desktop version of the homepage for example may look very different now (more room for images, less text and more flexibility), but the functionalities and interaction are basically the same.

The mobile version looks different too, and interaction has also significantly improved. It has a new menu bar, a new and larger font, and several elements have been redesigned. The block with related links ( new and old ) has been moved to the bottom of the page. The menu display on the sub-homepages ( new and old ) and topic pages ( new and old ) has also changed. In the autumn, we plan to add a second menu layer, so that faculties and research institutes can display their own main menu on all pages. This will help visitors to easily navigate to the underlying web pages.

Web renewal project
The Communication Department started the web refurbishment at the end of 2016. The look and feel of the mobile version were tackled first. In the second phase the structure and content of the website will be tackled in collaboration with the faculties and services. An important principle here is that the number of UG web pages must be reduced significantly so that navigation becomes clearer and more attention can be paid to the quality of the content. The UG website currently has over 300,000 pages.

Done and dusted?
The UG website has so many different parts and possibilities that its development, and more specifically its design, will never be done and dusted. We already have new web development projects in the pipeline for the profile pages and degree programme pages. The programme pages will be tackled first and the profile pages in the new academic year. Requests have come in for functional adaptations as well, but we will tackle those once this major release is behind us.