Mendoza College wins award for best website

The Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame was named the “Best University Website” by the Web Marketing Association as part of its 14th annual WebAward Competition. The award recognizes sites that exhibit excellence in both innovation and functionality.

The Mendoza College launched its redesigned site, business.nd.edu, in August 2009.

“Our goal in designing the Mendoza College website was to provide users with a different experience that reflects the energy and spirit of our school, and yet was easy to navigate so they could locate pertinent information,” said Bill Gangluff, director of Marketing and Web Strategies at the Mendoza College. “This WebAward serves as a nice acknowledgment that our team accomplished our goal.”

Entries were judged on seven criteria: design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation and use of technology. Other schools in the competition included Villanova University, UCLA Anderson and 13 others. All told, this year’s WMA competition involved the review of more than 2,000 sites from 45 countries in 96 industry categories.

The complete redesign process was accomplished over two years and involved 16 staff members from the Mendoza College Marketing, Communications and IT departments. The redesign included the development of sub-sites for five graduate and undergraduate degrees, a series of non-degree offerings, five academic centers, four academic departments, and a new online home for graduate business alumni.

Partnered with Corey McPherson Nash of Boston, the team designed the site’s content to support the Mendoza College’s Ask More of Business™ positioning statement, which is a call for students and others associated with the College to be a force for good in the world. The statement and its underlying three tenets – individual integrity, effective organizations and the greater good – are themes carried throughout the site, which includes a multimedia gallery, an “Asking More Commentary” section, a newsroom and an expanded coverage of faculty research.

The home page features an array of stories that can be shuffled in an interactive setting to support the new position. When clicked, each story realigns itself with boxes containing similar content and links to additional stories, videos, podcasts and other related content.

The Web Marketing Association is made up of Internet marketing, advertising, public relations and design professionals who share an interest in improving the quality of website development and marketing on the Internet. For more information about the award, visit www.webaward.org.

The Mendoza College of Business currently enrolls more than 1,700 undergraduate students in four majors: accountancy, finance, management and marketing. The College offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as both nonprofit and traditional executive development programs. Graduate degrees include the Notre Dame MBA, Executive MBA, Master of Nonprofit Administration and Master of Science in Accountancy. Mendoza currently is ranked No. 1 by Bloomberg Businessweek for its undergraduate program and No. 20 for both its Executive MBA and its MBA programs. For more information, visit business.nd.edu.

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