Site Admin Users Guide

Website strategy

Site Goals

  1. Highlight data-driven proof of success
  2. Showcase societal impact
  3. Demonstrate economic value
  4. Feature robust infrastructure and support
  5. Promote commercialization process and opportunities

Key Audiences

Primary

The primary audience for the site is Faculty and Researchers, with the intention of providing support and encouragement to submit their IP into the commercialization pipeline.

Secondary

For the following secondary audiences, the site sends a clear message regarding WashU’s commitment to innovation, including proof of successes and impact.

  • Funders
  • VC analysts/investors
  • Alumni/Donors
  • Students (current and prospective)

Results of content audit

From FUSE

After an audit of the content from the former Fuse site revealed the following:

  • Most of the stories were links to other sites, a good portion of which were broken
  • The student-focused links are relevant to the faculty/research focus of Innovation. Instead of migrating this content, call outs to the Skandalaris Center will be placed on several key pages.
  • Content that was created specifically for Fuse (e.g. the Women and Innovation series and Holiday Gift Guides) will be migrated to The Source and the permalinks will be redirected.

From peer sites

The team identified several elements from peer sites to include:

  • Impact dashboard
  • List of startups with WashU DNA

Content Strategy

Through the site’s content structure and taxonomy, we aim to accomplish the following:

Make our key selling points transparent with the main navigation

  • Ecosystem
  • Impact
  • Process
  • Technologies

Use the home page content to establish our WashU Innovation narrative, featuring:

  • highlights from the Impact Dashboard
  • a featured video
  • upcoming events (embedding a widget from Happenings)
  • featured resources
  • a featured company
  • a featured sector
  • several featured highlights
  • and a social post

Offer actionable content for faculty and researchers

  • Offer links to Skandalaris Center for student innovators

Create a low maintenance system for site admin

  • Balance dynamic web experience with low content management effort
  • Aggregation of content using filters and categories
  • Display and contextualize content on various pages
  • Pull in content from external sources