David May's Portfolio: Website Construction and Maintenance

This section of the Pogona Creative website is designed to provide more detail on just a few of the projects that I have been involved with, and the specific roles that I played. It does not provide detail on day-to-day responsibilities or general skills.

Chapman University Website Overhaul and Iteration

As is the case in most Universities, Chapman's early website was maintained and managed by the Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) team, and the site served the Chapman community well. However, by 2011 the website was operating on outdated technology, and digital marketing was on the rise. While the technology would continue to be supported by IS&T, the content and design would be managed by a newly formed central marketing team.

I was hired in May of 2011 and my task was to lead a project that would result in a totally new website - new code, new content, and new media. On March 27 of 2012, the University's new website launched. Each year, we created at least one major improvement or supporting microsite to further our marketing goals.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management.

    • Supervise product iteration after launch, regularly providing new features, bug resolution, and improvements to technology and design. 

  • Budget supervision.

  • Coordinate with stakeholders across campus, including senior administration and academic deans. Present progress, strategy, and results.

  • Mobilize members of the Chapman community who were not part of central marketing to provide content, assets, and assistance with each section of the website.

  • Supervise the central marketing staff that would iterate the site allowing for constant improvement to design and technology.

    • Staff for this particular project included vendors, a designer, developers, marketing content authors, analytics experts, a social media specialist, and SEO/SEM specialists.

  • Collaborate with IS&T and other departments to ensure the maximum possible levels of government compliance.

Before:

Chapman University's Website in 2011.

Chapman University's Website in 2011.

After:

Chapman University Website in 2017, after an initial redesign in 2012 and many years of ITERATIVE design

Chapman University Website in 2017, after an initial redesign in 2012 and many years of ITERATIVE design

Marketing Microsites for Chapman University

In addition to Chapman's primary website, my team was tasked with the creation and maintenance of a variety of sites to support Chapman's events and objectives. Here is a list of some of these projects, roughly in the order in which they were created:

Blogs - blogs.chapman.edu

With the launch of our new University website, we wanted to take the opportunity to show that we were an amazing institution, not just tell about it.

Strategic Marketing and Communications Knowledge Base (SMC-KB):

This website served as an internal resource for our community. By the end of my tenure at Chapman University, our web and digital media team was fifteen strong, but a major portion of our success was our campaign to mobilize individuals across campus to support our digital marketing efforts. By creating training resources, policy and best practices, and rewards, we were able to motivate members of each department to write blog posts, effectively utilize their social media accounts, and update their web pages. The SMC-KB housed the training documents, policy, guidelines, style guides, and other documentation to foster success.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff for this particular project included in-house developers and a marketing content author.

Social Media Hub - (social.chapman.edu)

Branding is critical to the success of any modern company or institution, but how does a central marketing authority maintain brand standards when accounts are controlled by 40 decentralized human resources? The politically difficult explanation is to centralize all of those human resources and have total control over the content. In a college or university setting, this is not the recommended approach. Instead, we decided to empower our community, and give them the tools and the training that they needed to create on-brand content that met the needs of their sub-brands and still spoke to the primary brand.

One of the rewards that we provided for on-brand, high-quality social content was the ability to be included in our official social media hub which launched in February of 2013 and was far ahead of its time. In 2014, it received an honorable Webby Award.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff for this particular project included an in-house designer, developers, marketing content authors, analytics experts, and a social media specialist.

Inside - (inside.chapman.edu)

This website provided our visitors to easily find trending news stories and recent social content.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff for this particular project included an in-house designer, developers, marketing content authors, analytics experts, and a social media specialist.

Events - (events.chapman.edu)

Chapman University used 25Live as its scheduling system, and it worked well to organize logistics and coordinate resources. The public calendar view, however, provided some opportunity for improvement. By leveraging the same technology that our in-house team wrote for our social media hub and trending content page, our talented team of designers and developers created a user-friendly calendar that drew in 25Live (specifically, resource 25) data and presented it in a more appealing way.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff for this particular project included in-house designers, developers, marketing content authors, analytics experts, a social media specialist, and a SEO/SEM specialist.

Squarespace Microsites

Sometimes a custom website is simply more than is necessary for a given project. In situations where sites needed to be quickly created, Squarespace was utilized. These template-based web pages were easy to spin up quickly, looked great, and met the needs of our clients.

  • Chapman 50 - This website served as a central hub and recruitment tool for an elite group of Chapman alumni.

  • Cirque Symposium - This website served as a hub and recruitment tool for a short-term class that was presented in collaboration between Cirque du Soleil and Chapman University.

  • Global Arts Festival - This website served as a hub and recruitment tool for an annual Chapman University event.

  • The Hilbert Museum - This website serves as the primary website for a Chapman-affiliated museum made possible by generous art donations.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff for these particular projects included an in-house designer and marketing content authors.

  • Provide training to clients so that the sites could be maintained by non-marketing resources.

WordPress Microsites

  • The Big Orange Book Festival: 

  • AICCU - www.aiccu.edu

  • Huell Howser Archives - huellhowserarchives.com

  • Neighbors of Chapman - https://neighborsofchapman.com/

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

  • Provide training to clients so that the sites could be maintained by non-marketing resources.

Chapman Broadcast Network (signage.chapman.edu)

Digital Signage

Unique "mini-sites" within the primary Chapman Website

The new Chapman website was built initially with a variety of templates, but then over time, the overall number of templates was reduced to three highly modular templates. These templates accommodated the vast majority of Chapman's primary 5000+ page website, but there were a few high-traffic areas that needed something special.

  • CU Economic Forecast - The Chapman Economic Forecast was one of Chapman's premiere events, and initially, the website used its own template. As time went on, we were able to accommodate the content and meet the goals using the standard templates.

  • Discover Chapman - This site was the landing page for our "Discover Chapman" campaign, and provided users with the ability to sort and review content that was relevant to them.

  • Degrees and Programs section of Chapman's website - Prior to the creation of this web page, the list of Chapman degrees and programs was just that - a list. Building on the concept, design, and technology created for the Discover Chapman campaign, the new degrees and programs allowed users a far simpler way to research Chapman's offerings.

David's Responsibilities:

  • Project management.

  • Product ownership and management including product iteration.

  • Staff and budget supervision.

    • Staff on these particular projects included vendors, designers, developers, marketing content authors, analytics experts, and SEO/SEM specialists.