Global Reach recently started its design process on the future Board of Regents website by reviewing the board’s various requests and deciding on a design format.

Funded out of a necessity to keep the site modern and easy to use, the board will spend approximately $20,000 on the improvements. Global Reach, a web design firm in Ames, will implement the design of the website.

Celebrating its 20th year in Iowa in 2015, the company has worked with site design for major businesses, including the Blank Park Zoo, Casey’s and Court Avenue Restaurant & Brewing Co. After deliberation, the regents chose Global Reach over five other website design firms.

Josh Lehman, senior communications director for the Board of Regents, sees the website overhaul as a need to create a site that excels in ease of use for visitors.

“We are just getting started with the design,” Lehman said. “We want to have a website that is clean and attractive while also easy to navigate. We also want to make sure that the website is fully responsive, accessible and is easy to find information.”

Responsive website design is a trend that is in direct response to the increased use of small media devices such as tablets and smartphones. With a responsive design, web pages can adapt on the fly to accommodate a viewer’s device.

“The new site will feature a responsive design,” said Christina Klinge, senior project manager for Global Reach Productions. “What this means is that the site will be developed in a way that it will detect the screen size of the device and then adjust itself. This will be the greatest improvement. When you accessed the old site on a phone you would have to do much more scrolling and zooming to see the content.”

Global Reach will begin all of its projects with a design kickoff meeting, where the client will meet the creative director and review the questionnaire filled out by the regents. 

“From here, we will talk about what they like and what they don’t like, essentially getting a feel for the best design for them,” Klinge said. 

Once a design is chosen, the team will begin work, and the finished product is expected to be up and running by July 11.