Website Roadmap

Website Roadmap

The Students’ Union website is a key resource for students to engage with us. Whether it’s signing up to Sports Clubs and Societies, accessing advice or voting in an election – the website is central to how students access the Union.

In January 2021, we launched our new website with MSL and as part of the new website, we worked on a complete review of content, user experience research and implementing a new admin system. After 18 months of settling into the new site, the work doesn’t stop there as in order to keep the website updated and relevant to our members, continual development work needs to take place.

The below shows our Website Roadmap for 2022/23 and the areas the Communications Team will work with staff to develop sections of the website.

There are 3 large scale projects which heavily link to the User Experience of our site and will each need proper project plans, status reports and time frames with key deadlines to work to.

These 3 projects will stretch over the next full academic year, but ideally should all be given allotted timeframes in the year, to effectively manage alongside other work.

Large Scale Projects:

• Advice Service UX - (Update: We’ve not achieved what we’d have liked and want to work with the Advisors on re-scoping what’s needed).
• Clubs & Societies UX
• Liberation Hub (Working alongside the EDI Strategy and Student-Led/Union Campaigns).

Our annual website projects tend to happen around the same time each year. These naturally build the main workload of the website and we should fit other upcoming projects around this to ensure we’re not overloading at key times in the year.

Annual Website Projects:

• Officer Update
• Content Review
• Freshers
• Media Sales
• Impact Report
• Elections
• Varsity
• Awards Season
• Website Audit & work on findings

Something to consider is website work requested outside of what’s listed below. Projects we’re not aware of yet or urgent work that’s required which we have to react to, isn’t always possible to plan in detail. Time should always be left spare to work on these when needed.

Other Upcoming Projects:

• Academic Rep
• Liberation Hub
• Governance & Trustee Board
• Highlighting Our Impact
• Staff Hub

Another factor for consideration is the time the Web & Digital role spends supporting website admin tasks and supporting other staff as website tech support. We want staff to become more independent with using the website and want to do some thinking about how we can get staff feeling more confident and comfortable. Particularly with solving their own minor issues or questions by using the MSL Knowledge Base.

If you have any questions or want to find out more, don’t hesitate to speak to us!

2022 - 2023