CONWAY, Ark. (November 8, 2012) - The Hendrix College website is the 2012 Ektron Site of the Year.
The award, announced today at the Synergy Conference in Washington, D.C., was accepted by Jay Burling, web applications director in the Office of Technology Services and a 2003 Hendrix graduate, and Josh Daugherty, lead designer in the Office of Marketing Communications at Hendrix. Burling and Daugherty were invited to the conference to discuss responsive web design.
Nearly 50 entries were nominated, from which 19 semi-finalists were selected. Among the five finalists were Hendrix, CHEP; Behringer Harvard; Houston Grand Opera; and Rawlings Sporting Goods Company.
The redesigned Hendrix website, launched in spring 2012, was touted by Ektron, a content management service, as a model of responsive web design, is this article. The site executes different content queries based on the maximum width of a visitor's display. This responsive media-based query system, which is enabled by the Ektron Web Content Management platform, displays varying degrees of content for visitors reaching the site, regardless of device.
"Our goal has always been to build our website in a manner that makes it as easy as possible for our audience to find what interests them most, no matter what device they are using," said Jay Burling, director of web applications and a 2003 Hendrix graduate. "Our utilization of responsive web design in the new site is just the latest example of that."
Hendrix has more than 650 Ektron CMS users including faculty and staff members of the College and over 11,000 membership users including current students, alumni, parents, and other Hendrix community members. Following the re-design, Hendrix noted a dramatic improvement in the quality of site traffic, with more visitors staying longer and deepening their connection with the school. Mobile unique visitors to the Hendrix website increased by 143 percent since the responsive re-design.
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the fifth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country's "Up and Coming" liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report. Hendrix is featured in the 2012 edition of the Princeton Review as one of the country's best 377 colleges, the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, Forbes magazine's annual list of America's Top 650 Colleges, and the 2013 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.