An increasing number of prospective students are accessing college websites solely through mobile devices.Consider these stats from the 2014 E-Expectations report:

• Both students and parents overwhelmingly said they used smartphones for their mobile browsing.
• Nine out of ten seniors and eight out of ten parents have access to a mobile device.
• 71 percent of seniors and 45 percent of parents have looked at college websites on their mobile devices.

This means that University websites must be optimized for consumption on smartphones and tablets, and we will be transitioning the homepage to a mobile friendly design over the next several months. The new design will have specific layouts for desktops, tablets and phones.

Rather than introduce all of the changes at once as with past redesigns, we plan to slowly change major sections to match the new designs, allowing a more gradual transition where we can adapt to feedback.

Global masthead changes

Today, we updated the website global masthead to a more touch-friendly design. The new masthead is a further modification of the changes we introduced in our initial mobile templates.

This change will take some time to complete. Web Press sites will see the new masthead very quickly. Other sites will have a much more gradual rollout as we have time to change their templates.

As part of the change, the four major links the homepage has offered within the BearPass login tab will now be in a touch-friendly menu on every page throughout the site.

BearPass login tab on the homepage going away

On Sept. 22, the BearPass login tab will direct people to use the new BearPass menu in the masthead.

On Oct. 6, we plan to completely remove the BearPass login tab on the homepage. While it is the single most popular tab, the design methodology is not compatible with our mobile friendly layouts.

Feedback welcome

As always, we welcome your feedback throughout the process. Please comment on this post, or email web@missouristate.edu.