VCU news

By Elinor Frisa

As the new school year approaches, many fresh starts are just around the corner, including one for Virginia Commonwealth University’s homepage. A beta version of the redesigned VCU.edu launched this week and will be available until the new site goes live the first week of September.

A discovery phase last fall, which included stakeholder interviews, a survey, user testing, analytics review and more, informed the strategy for the new site. It focuses on the needs of prospective students and their families while strongly conveying the university’s Uncommon brand.

“This outstanding redesign marks another important chapter in telling our Uncommon story,” said Grant Heston, vice president for enterprise marketing and communications for VCU and VCU Health. “Our new site showcases the best of VCU to show prospective students and their families that we are unlike any other university.

“Congratulations and thanks to the many team members who combined research, creativity and strategy into a beautiful, modern new homepage.”

Website users are invited to preview the beta site and provide feedback via a pop-up survey on the beta homepage or by emailing homepage@vcu.edu. When the new homepage launches in September, a link to the old version will be available at the top for a limited time to help ease the transition for those who regularly visit the homepage.

Here are five things to know about the new website.

There has been a shift in prospective.

No, that’s not a typo. Prospective students and their families are the target audience for the new website. While they were considered the primary audience for the previous iteration of the website, this redesign shifts the focus even more toward their needs, helping them get to know VCU but also guiding them along steps of the recruitment journey, up to and including applying. From the homepage, prospective students will be able to quickly check whether VCU has a program they’re interested in, learn about upcoming admissions events and see important dates and deadlines.

You can still find old favorites.

While prospective students and their families are the new website’s target audience, there’s still plenty of reasons for current students, faculty, staff and other visitors to come to VCU.edu. Keeping up with the latest news and events is one of them, as is easy access to everyday tools like email and the myVCU portal.

Top-clicked resources, including email, Canvas, myVCU and links to resource pages for specific audiences like faculty and staff, can now be found in the Quick Links box within the full menu. On desktop, a link to the myVCU portal can also be found at the top right of the page. And as always, search is never far away – you can find it in the top right of the page or in the full menu.

The site is taking a less-is-more approach to navigation.

With potential new Rams in mind, we’ve streamlined the navigation and given the homepage a cleaner look, with a goal of making it easier for prospective students and their families to find top recruitment information. By simplifying, we aim to reduce distractions and present smoother paths on their journey to deciding whether VCU is right for them.

What makes VCU uncommon? Let us count the ways.

There are so many elements that make VCU a university unlike any other – which is why we’ve infused our new Uncommon brand into the site. We’ve also created a new section called Why VCU where we gather some of our best facts, stats, stories, imagery, testimonials and more to highlight and celebrate what sets us apart.

Why VCU is packed with content, but we’ve designed it to be scannable – you don’t need to watch every video or read every bit of text to walk away with a solid sense of what VCU is. Students who are trying to convince their parents that VCU is the place for them can point them to Why VCU, or on the flip side, parents who want their children to consider VCU should find this section helpful. It’s also a good resource for a potential faculty or staff hire who wants to show a partner the benefits of moving to Richmond to work at VCU. Our goal is to truly and authentically answer: Why VCU?

More videos!

Storytelling is woven throughout the site, but we’d be remiss not to include more visual storytelling, and that includes video. From time to time, you’ll find looping videos at the top of the homepage, and there’s a new section that showcases student voices via our Instagram Reels. Speaking of video content, we’ve put together a short video that walks you through the new homepage and shows you where to find things.