UNL's website has been judged 2014’s "best overall" (http://go.unl.edu/edustyle_best_14)in higher education by eduStyle, the leading authority on higher-ed web design. Best Overall Web Site is the eduStyle Awards' highest annual honor. eduStyle, based in Alberta, Canada, is an online community of over 10,000 higher education web professionals.
2014 marks the seventh year for the eduStyle Awards, which celebrate the best work in college and university websites. This year’s nominees represented over 70 schools in 18 categories.
The nominees were selected from hundreds of sites submitted throughout the year. All categories were judged by a panel of experts on design, code quality, cross device support (responsive or mobile), usability and creativity. The "best overall web site" category also considers consistency across the site, navigation and how well all the other criteria stack up across many different locations on the site.
UNL's website is developed by content creators throughout the university, publishing online within the UNLedu Web Framework, now in its 4.0 version. The framework is developed by the UNL Web Developer Network, a community of UNL web professionals, and Internet and Interactive Media, a partnership of University Communications and Information Technology Services. UNL hosting infrastructure and public information web applications are jointly provided by ITS and UComm as common-good services to the UNL community.
This recognition from eduStyle follows other awards for the first UNLedu 4.0 site to be released, that of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. HLFPA’s site was honored with awards from the American Marketing Association and the Advertising Federation, and it received the highest national award given this year for an institutional website by CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education). HLFPA’s site development was a close partnership between the college, University Communications and the Internet and Interactive Media group.
UNL.edu has been recognized before by eduStyle. The site was featured as one of 20 leading higher education websites in the 2009 book "The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher-Ed Homepage Design,” and twice received recognition as an eduStyle "Noteworthy” site.
A “best overall” award is a recognition of the first-mover advantage UNL has as a large university that has taken a unified approach to branding and has extended that approach to its websites. This award is a recognition of the collaborative efforts of talented content creators and web developers throughout the university.
Learn more about the Web Developer Network at http://wdn.unl.edu