What’s up with CEU’s web site?

This archived article was written by: Stuart Lake

There are a few parts of a college that should always look professional and show prospective students and others how dignified that college or university really is. The College of Eastern Utah has a lot of different parts of it that look very dignified; unfortunately our web site is not one of them.
In this day and age a first impression is everything, and the first impression of a web site really says a lot about an organization, and CEU’s web site is one of the most badly organized and hardest to navigate sites that is out there. It has not been updated in a few years and if you look at other college web sites, they are far more dynamic, pleasing to the eye and easer to navigate.
The CEU web site is just a compilation of links that you don’t really know where they will go or what they will do. Not to mention the fact that if you click on them, you might just get an error page that tells you that it is down. This is very frustrating if you are trying to get information off the web site. It seems as though the site was just pieced together one page at a time with no thought for the whole picture and no consistency throughout.
Thinking about what this site says to our prospective students should be enough for the college to consider redoing the site. Our website looks like we are running a two-bit operation. It does not show prospective students a very good side of CEU. The entire look and feel of other college sites in Utah is inviting and cutting edge.
The Eagle logo is not even on the main page of our site. The sites for the University of Utah, Dixie State College, Snow College, and countless others show what those schools are really about. CEU has a lot of really great features and we need to let our prospective students know it. We also need to make it more functional for the students that we have attending now.
The web site also has major problems with the WebCT, as well as the student login section where you can drop and add classes and look at unofficial copies of your transcript. This site is often down, leaving many students frustrated that they are not able to get on the net and check the grades like they want to.
CEU needs to take a look at the other college web sites in Utah and at least make our site up to par with theirs. It would not take a lot of work to do, but it would really improve the quality of the site and the first impression that is given when you look at our site.
It is a major disappointment that a college with the experience and talent we have is not able to get a web site that is attractive and functional. We need something that looks good and is easy to navigate. The web site is CEU’s face to the world. The majority of students that are looking for colleges are looking at their web sites and the CEU site does not cut it. It is our face to the world and it is not looking that great. Updating our website should be one of the main priorities of CEU’s administration.