The USI website gets quite a bit of traffic – we pull in around 94% of our viewers from Ireland and the UK (mostly from Northern Ireland). We’re fairly extensively linked to and we attract an enormous amount of spam.
All of this makes developing and managing the site somewhat complex – but rewarding when viewership increases due to changes to the site. We’re already seeing some small evidence of that today.
The new design aims to put the stories we think will interest the rest of the world in our work – we have an external readership focus for 80% of the website, with a corporate focus for the 20% of the rest of development. We aim to put out news of campaigns and issues first, and support our members engage with those issues and campaigns, along with the structures and systems in the organisation.
The new features of the site are:
USI Events
A proper Events Notification and booking system. If USI is hosting an event, its details and the opportunity to book will be available on the site.
Blogs for Officers
Student officers lead USI – now they can communicate their thoughts, their take on events and share news about their work with members.
Blogs for Committees and Administration
This allows the committees of USI to communicate directly with members when it’s necessary.
Forum
The only closed section of the site, this section allows members of National Council (the Presidents of Students Unions) and other sabbatical officers to communicate openly with USI officers and one another.
Safety Online
USI doesn’t store personally identifying information from users on the website – and we identify off-site links.