As a first step in its efforts to redesign the University website, the Brandeis Web Team sent a feedback survey with potential new layouts to the student body on Jan. 15. The website is set to undergo several changes when the redesign begins in March.

The Web Team, which is composed of staff members from both the Office of Communications and Library and Technology Services, has partnered with mStoner, Inc., a web strategy and design firm that focuses on higher education and has worked with more than 300 colleges and schools, according to their website. mStoner Inc. will be working with the University to complete the redesign.

Audrey Griffin-Goode, the director of digital communications in the Office of Communications and a member of the Web Team, wrote in an email to the Justice that the two main goals of the redesign are to make the website mobile-friendly and accessible to those with disabilities.

“There have been a lot of changes in how websites are consumed since the current Brandeis website was designed,” Griffin-Goode wrote.

“More and more people view sites on their mobile devices, and our website is being redesigned to meet the demands of that growing trend,” she added.

The new templates will be built in the content management system Cascade Server, the CMS that the current website uses.

Some of the specific changes that will be made include a more modern design, larger fonts and photos, an improved search engine and the integration of more social media and multimedia on the site. “We want the new website to reflect how dynamic the Brandeis community is,” Griffin-Goode wrote, adding that the new content-focused approach will display the University’s “best qualities.”

Griffin-Goode also noted the importance of including opinions of the Brandeis community in design strategy.

On Jan. 15, the Web Team sent out a survey to the student body to gain input on possible redesign ideas.

The survey showed samples of redesigned webpages of the Brandeis website and asked a variety of questions, including which three words the viewer would use to describe the design and whether they thought it was easily navigable and engaging.

Students were also able to click on specific sections of the sample webpage to highlight which elements they liked and disliked.

According to the survey that was administered to students, the sample webpages shown incorporated “many features that were requested through the Brandeis web team’s survey of campus web editors” and were developed by a “nationally recognized strategy and design consultant.”

Additionally, Griffin-Goode noted that last June the web team conducted “a series of discovery sessions on campus with students, faculty and staff to solicit feedback” on potential new website designs. The official redesign project began in June 2015 and went through several stages of planning and production, including formation of strategy and creative production. The actual template implementation is set to begin in March and will continue throughout and after the spring semester.

According to the website for the Office of Communications, there are over 22,000 live web pages whose templates must be changed in the redesign process, but most pages will be completely migrated to the new template by the end of 2016, with the main pages launching in the late summer, according to Griffin-Goode.

The Brandeis website was first launched in 1997 and has gone through several previous redesigns.