Overview
This article outlines the technical specifications and design requirements for creating a web template that replicates an institution's existing website within Curriculum Strategy. It details the necessity of providing live URLs rather than screenshots to ensure accurate branding, including header and footer configuration, navigation styles, and content formatting. Additionally, the guide explains options for organizing program content using tabular or expand and collapse models to improve mobile responsiveness and user experience.
Curriculum Strategy hosts your online catalog and template. Our intent is to a create web template that replicates your Institutional website. Please provide web pages that accurately reflect your Institution's website. If you are undergoing a redesign, please guide us to pages on your development site. We will use these pages as guidance when creating the web template for your catalog.
Please note that screenshots will not allow us to pull the needed information to create your catalog site, please provide website URL’s. If you wish for the catalog site to appear slightly different, please provide a branding guide or create a mock page that will allow us to pull the necessary information.
Guidance on the following types of information is needed to create your web template.
Header/Footer:
Some schools prefer to minimize the information in the header/footer to reduce complexity, error, and broken links. Consider what information you may want to include. By default, we will create a more simplified, accessible version of your institution's header/footer for your site unless specified otherwise. Learn more about header/footer accessibility in our Header/Footer Accessibility article.
Please note, because we are hosting your catalog, if information in the header/footer is changed on your site, we need to be notified in order to replicate that change.
- Banner image/style/text
- Background images/colors
- Footer styles/text
Navigation Links:
- Global navigation links/Navigation styles
- This is referring to the left or right hand navigation of the web catalog.
- Link styles
- Often text that is linked will appear differently than regular text. Please point us to an example of a hyperlink.
Branding:
These sections refer to the bulk of the information located on a page. We need to understand how basic paragraph text, indented text, spacing, headers, colors, fonts, and table styles should appear on a page.
- Fonts/font colors
- Content styles
- Heading/subheading styles
- Lists (bullets, numbering)
- Tables
Building your Program Content
(Tabular or Expand/Collapse models)
If there is consistency across your programs, you may choose to go with a tabular or expand/collapse model to display your program content.
If you have several headings in your degrees and certificates (such as “Program Overview,” “Admission Details,” etc. in the sample catalog below) and the headings contain a substantial amount of information, tabular or expand/collapse options work well. Both models are mobile-friendly, as users will not have to scroll very much to view all of the content.
Please note that the models are built based on the URLs you provided for your web template, so styles may vary slightly.
Be sure to have a conversation with your PC if you want your program content to display in one of these formats. Otherwise, the default is for all of the content to display on one page as a single scroll.
Tabular Model
Expand and Collapse Model
Adding Google Analytics to Your Catalog Website
Google Analytics
While Curriculum Strategy doesn’t have built-in catalog analytics just yet, we've got you covered! You can easily connect your own Google Analytics account to your catalog site. If you're new to it, Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks and reports on your website traffic. It’s a great way to see where your audience is coming from (like search engines or social media), what they're exploring on your site, and which of your marketing efforts are hitting the mark.
If You Already Have a Google Analytics Account
You will need to provide the JavaScript code snippet from your Google Analytics account to Curriculum Strategy. You can submit that via a support ticket, and we will add the snippet to each page of your website.
How to Get Your Snippet
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
- Click Admin (the gear icon) in the bottom left corner.
- Under the Property column, click Data Streams and select your website.
- Look for the Google tag section and click View tag instructions.
- Under the Install manually tab, you will find the required JavaScript snippet to copy.
If You Are New to Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics is simple. Just create a property for your site or app on the Google Analytics Platform, generate your tracking code, and provide it to Curriculum Strategy to start tracking traffic. Once it's live, you can easily check out the predefined reports or customize your own dashboard to follow the metrics you care about most.
You’ll need to provide us with the JavaScript code snippet for your account. You can do that by submitting a ticket through support. To get the snippet from your Google Analytics account, see the steps outlined above.