Mobile usage is growing exponentially — particularly among our largest demographics of prospective students, Millennials and Gen Z.

Last year, Google experienced two mobile milestones:

• The mobile tipping point, in which the number of mobile searches in the U.S. surpassed searches on PCs
• Mobilegeddon, a change to the Google search algorithm that benefits mobile-friendly websites over their non-mobile-friendly counterparts

Academic websites converting to mobile

In response to the growing need to reach our audience on mobile devices, we began the process of converting all academic department websites to a mobile-friendly format in 2015.

The conversion process is not a complete redesign. Instead, it converts each site to the mobile template and reorganizes existing content for consumption on mobile devices.

Like the academic website redesigns, conversions are funded by the provost’s office and processed on a college-by-college rotation according to the deans’ prioritization.

Websites that are converted to the mobile-friendly template will later undergo redesign, during which new content, multimedia elements and design elements will be created. This two-step process allows our office to optimize all academic websites for mobile consumption as quickly as possible.

Progress in the first half of 2016

During the first six months of this year, we published the following mobile-friendly website conversions:

• Master of Natural and Applied Science
• Nursing
• Finance and General Business
• Social Work
• Counseling, Leadership and Special Education
• Political Science
• Modern and Classical Languages
• Physics, Astronomy and Materials Science
• Technology and Construction Management
• Chemistry

Progress anticipated for the second half of 2016

An additional 14 academic websites are either currently in conversion or scheduled to begin the process before the start of the fall semester. We expect all of these conversions to be published during the first half of the fall semester.