TechTown Site Launches
We just launched the redesigned and realigned TechTown Web site. Although it is not a department of the university TechTown is closely tied to us and provides high-technology startups with the resources they need to be successful. They approached our department to raise the stature of their site to match what is deserves.
New Site Features
Compacted header with primary branding. One central navigation menu with drop down’s. A central spot to promote one of the many TechTown companies. A center News and Events area with RSS feeds, this is the main point of the new homepage, to show how active the community is.
In the middle is the actual explaination of TechTown with a loop through promotions to the right and below that an actual map of where TechTown is located. Since there is no location tied to the name TechTown we added a visual map to show it is located in Detroit, MI.
Compare to the Old
Comparing the old TechTown site to the new is night and day. Before the header was a large image which really had nothing to do with TechTown as an incubator for new technology. The news in the upper left was useless, it almost never changed and was competing with the TechTown logo.
In addition to the header there were TWO menus on the page competing for eye balls. Most of the links on the left are to external sites which launch in an iframe in the center of the TechTown site. This is a horrible idea on many levels and yet there are legitimate links peppered throughout the left menu. The top menu is pretty solid although the items have no particular order to them.
The main content has been static for a while and it takes up a ton of realestate, in addition the right column with the tenant roster just lists a bunch of logos and names but does not give any insight into what these companies do, it is just like a post it board so all the companies can have “homepage presence”.
Overall
The launch was a great success in both rebranding TechTown and getting information to the users in a more friendly and organized manner.
Checkout the site at: http://techtownwsu.org/
