PRESS RELEASE

Monday October 31st, 2011

College launches website – in house celebrations

Exeter College is celebrating launching its new website today particularly since its design and layout has all been achieved with the expertise of its own in-house web design and marketing teams.

The website, launched on November 1st, is designed to be central to the college’s marketing and communications – whether that is to prospective 16 – 18 year olds students, to parents, to higher education students or to the increasing number of employers who are contacting the college to train their workforce and apprentices.

“It’s not unusual for an organisation such as ours to have a highly designed website,” said Richard Atkins, Principal of Exeter College, “but we are particularly proud that this new website has been designed in-house rather than commissioning from a web agency. This means that we have been able to secure value for money from the project as well as ensure that students’ and staff views of what our website should contain have been able to be incorporated effectively in the new design.”

The website, www.exe-coll.ac.uk has particular new features, demanded by focus groups and surveys of students throughout the year, such as virtual tours of the college’s facilities, easy to navigate student sections, links to the facebook and twitter pages and links to videos showing student views about courses and college life.

Richard Brine, head of information and learning services said “It’s important that the website offers a good experience to visitors whatever browser or device they are using to view it. The careful selection of web technologies and techniques was, therefore, an essential component in building the new site.”

“We were keen to listen to the demands of all our customer group”, said Roselle Thompson, deputy head of marketing and communications at the college and project manager for the new website “so we spent a lot of time auditing our current website and talking to students, staff and stakeholders about what they expect. Our website, facebook and twitter audiences are growing and it’s essential that the college keeps up to date with current trends and use these techniques to support the way people are able to find out about what the college can offer. It’s really exciting that we’ve been able to work closely with our Learning Media team since they’ve been able to incorporate the designs our students demanded.”

And the college is still keen to ensure that they’re listening to feedback. Any student who comments on the new website via our Exeter College Advisers Facebook page will be entered into a draw to win amazon vouchers.

For further information, call Sylvia Jarman on 01392 205585, 07800 745855 or sylviajarman@exe-coll.ac.uk