Web Communications Group>

Web Communications Group Meeting: 04-23-07
Meeting minutes

I. The meeting opened with a brief update on the feedback received from the Penn Web Calendar Group's calendar surveys. Two surveys were conducted; one for calendar users and another for calendar providers.

• Brief summary of feedback from the Calendar User Survey:
  • The survey received 1,880 responses.
  • 55% of the respondents stated that they did not use the Penn calendar.
    • Of those respondents, 55% claimed they did not use the calendar because they did not even know that Penn had an online events calendar.
    • 47% of those respondents claimed they do not use the calendar because it does not provide sufficient event information and/or the layout is confusing.
  • Approximately 43% of respondents claimed they do use the online events calendar.
    • Of those respondents, 40% said they visit the calendar on a weekly basis while 32% use the calendar on a monthly basis.
    • The most common way these users accessed the calendar was through the Penn homepage link (41%) and the link on the Penn Portal (37%) web site.
    • Almost 61% of of calendar users claimed to be very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the calendar appearance while 19% were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the appearance of the calendar.
    • Approximately 65% of calendar users looked for events on the Penn calendar by scrolling through a specific day or time.
    • Almost 63% of calendar users were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the amount of information typically provided in the event detail pages while 22% were very dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied.
    • Approximately 80% of calendar users considered the ability to create an event or alert as a very important or somewhat important new feature they would like to see in the Penn calendar.
    • 78% thought that lengthier event descriptions were very important or somewhat important and 66% thought that the ability to email event listings to a friend is very important or somewhat important.
  • Survey results can be viewed for a limited time at Survey Monkey. Requests for additional information can be obtained by emailing Jackie Eschbach.

• Brief summary of feedback from the Calendar Provider Survey:
  • The survey received 47 responses.
  • Almost 28% of the providers who responded have obtained help while using the Penn calendar.
  • 72% of the providers who responded do not bulk-load events to the Penn calendar.
  • When asked which calendar categories they use, almost 62% of the respondents selected the "Academic" category. The closest runner-up was "Meeting" at 22%.
  • A high percentage of respondents (almost 79%) would like the ability to list their event under more than one category and a majority of respondents (51%) felt that they did not have enough character space for their event description.
  • 80% of the respondents felt that it was easy to enter information into the Penn calendar.
  • Survey results can be viewed for a limited time at Survey Monkey. Requests for additional information can be obtained by emailing Jackie Eschbach.

II. Update on Penn Web Enhancement project

• Two projects have been approved:
  • Penn homepage enhancement:
    • New homepage design and central Penn web pages will be CSS-based.
    • Scheduled to launch in August 2007.
    • The University Communications Web Services group is in the process of reviewing design options presented by Heide Fraley of Swivel Studios.
  • Penn Digest: a web site that focuses on campus-wide news and events. Page 2 of this site focuses on faculty and staff related information.
    • News and events could be pulled from Research at Penn, Arts@Penn, Penn Current, Knowledge at Wharton, Almanac and University Communications.
    • Individual departments will input their own content--either by RSS feed or by adding the content into the content management system.
    • Certain schools or departments may have their own areas of the site (e.g. Athletics, Alumni, Wharton, Medicine, etc.)
    • Group members were shown the Penn Digest example that contains the design elements of one of the medium-branded templates.
    • Tentatively scheduled to launch in Fall 2007.


• The Penn Experience project has not been approved at this time but may be re-submitted at a later date.

III. Presentation of recently launched UPHS web site by Nicole Muther, Director, Web Division, Business Development, Marketing Services.

• During the Summer of 2006, UPHS was planning a major new image/branding campaign, We Are Medicine, to launch in September 2006.
• UPHS launched their redesigned homepage in September 2006.
• The health system home pages still reflected the previous image campaign, We See Life Ahead, which had been abandoned in all other mediums. They decided to partner with their ad agency to develop a new homepage that was consistent with the campaign.
• Their web site receives one million visitors per month.
• The health system originally had two web sites.
1. Pennhealth.com: primarily used as a marketing tool
2. UPHS site: all department web sites are listed here. Individuals created their own department web sites which caused the sites to have a lack of consistency.
• Having two different homepages caused some confusion among users. Architectural changes needed to be made.
• They now have one public home page, located at pennhealth.com. The public web site includes two components:
  1. Pages located on http://pennhealth.com are managed by Marketing
  2. Pages located on http://www.uphs.upenn.edu are managed by individual departments, centers, practices, labs
• Anyone interested in viewing the presentation should contact Nicole Muther directly.

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View news feeds from around the University in a single, automatically updated page.

Images of the University of Pennsylvania for download.

Penn Perspectives is a series of ongoing conversations with people doing exciting, innovative work at the University of Pennsylvania.

TV Spots: Penn has developed three new TV spots that highlight the University’s long tradition of ingenuity and entrepreneurship.

• Penn Nursing
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• Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology