Web & Digital

The Ecosystem sites are designed to have a consistent main navigation and footer across the platform. This provides the primary audience of prospective students with unified UMass Amherst messaging and a cohesive brand experience. 

It is Marcom’s responsibility to consider and prioritize the needs of each site while maintaining consistency across the platform. For this reason, editing of the main navigation and footer on Ecosystem sites is restricted to Marcom. Any deviation, therefore, must be the result of conversations between site owners and Marcom.  

Main navigation menus are designed to create top-level categories of content to guide users into the deeper content they need. Your site may have a maximum of five main menu items to maintain a clean, uncluttered design, allow sufficient white space, and create an effective experience on mobile browsers.    

These menus should include:

• Academics    
• Research    
• About  

Scrolling over these menus will provide visitors with drop-down mega-menus of primary and supplementary links to landing pages. Marcom suggests having no more than 10 primary and five optional supplementary links.    

Footers in Ecosystem include contact information and pathways into content for other audiences beyond the primary audience of prospective students. Depending on the site, these audiences include current students, faculty and staff, alumni, prospective employees, industry partners, and press. Marcom will help communicators decide which of these audiences to specify in the footer navigation.

Consistent logo application across UMass websites helps reinforce a clear, unified visual identity. Be sure to follow the guidelines below for your website.  

Wordmark Update for Headers and Footers

UMass is implementing a simplified and unified brand system centered around two core visual expressions:  

• The UMass Seal: Formal/Academic  
• The Collegiate M: Promotional  

After testing both expressions in the primary position of our web properties, the academic seal emerged as the clear preference across key audiences.

This outcome reinforces our commitment to a brand expression that reflects trust, legacy, and academic excellence.

Why This Matters  

• Reinforces heritage and authority while embracing a modern look
• Builds a consistent and credible user experience
• Aligns digital presence with the institution’s core values
• Increases brand recognition and emotional connection

Design Impact:

• Becomes a distinctive design feature that elevates UMass’s brand presence
• Offers a modernized yet timeless aesthetic that honors the university’s heritage
• Highlights the strong brand personality and core attributes through a contemporized treatment ownable by UMass

Primary Brand Application (Core Brand Site)

This implementation includes both the seal branding (header) and the Collegiate M (footer).

Watermark seal* and Collegiate M lockup is consistently represented in the header and footer.

*On mobile, the branding on the header displays the short-form mark.

Secondary Extensions & Departments/Units

This implementation includes both the seal branding (header) and the Collegiate M (footer).

Watermark seal* (paired with the extension or department name) and Collegiate M lockup is consistently represented in the header and footer.

*On mobile, the branding on the header displays the short-form mark.

Call-to-action (CTA) buttons should always be included on degree program pages. The primary CTA button should read “Apply” and link to the admissions landing page. The secondary CTA button (if used) should read “Request information” and link to the “Get Connected with UMass Amherst!” form through admissions. These links are designed to help visitors—especially the primary audience of prospective students—get the information they want.  

Graduate programs should link to appropriate resources from graduate admissions.  

Tracking visits to these admissions resources through these links is an important piece of how we measure the success of Ecosystem sites. Check with Marcom to be certain that you are using the correct destination URLs. 

Site alerts are microcontent on Ecosystem sites. They are banners at the top of pages that provide urgent, timely information in a clear, salient format. Alerts can only be created and edited by site owners.

There are two types of alerts on Ecosystem sites: informational alerts and emergency alerts.  

Informational Alerts  

Informational alerts are for messages that are temporary and timely, but not critical. For example, a school or college might post an alert for an enrollment deadline.  

An informational alert will only appear on the homepage of a site. Once visitors navigate beyond the homepage, they will no longer see these alerts.  

Emergency Alerts  

Emergency alerts appear on all pages of the site. They override any active informational alerts. Emergency alerts are for urgent information that site visitors need to see right away. For example, a gas leak in your building would warrant an emergency alert.  

Ecosystem emergency alerts are a functionality that should only be used by the Mount Ida Campus and the UMass Amherst Henry M. Thomas III Center at Springfield. These sites need a way of communicating emergency alerts within Ecosystem, while UMass Amherst communicates alerts through the Homepage suite.

Ecosystem sites have defined user roles with distinct levels of permissions.  

Marcom has given site owners the ability to manage the users of their site. To follow best practices, Marcom recommends limiting the number of site owners on a given site to no more than three. A limited number of site owners have the benefit of streamlining communication between communicators and Marcom, as well as simplifying management tasks within the school or college unit.  

The roles within Ecosystem sites are:  

Site Owner  

Site owners are responsible for managing user permissions within their site and have full access to editing (with the addition of the content editor role). Site owners can also create redirects within their site and are the only role with the ability to edit and publish content to the site’s homepage.  

Content Editor  

Most users regularly working in Ecosystem should be content editors. Content editors can edit the site, but they cannot manage user permissions.  

Department Editor  

Department editors can edit department taxonomy terms. These terms are used on department homepages. Department editors can also add and edit the "person" content type.  

Event Editor  

An event editor only has permissions to add content using the "event" content type.  

Anonymous Users & Authenticated Users  

There are no permissions associated with anonymous users or authenticated users. The distinction is that an anonymous user is visiting the site with no login credentials required, and an authenticated user has logged in.  

Administrator  

The administrator role is restricted to Marcom only.  

Whenever possible—and depending on whether their audience is internal or external—documents should either be shared internally, converted to web content, or removed.  

Documents for an Internal Audience  

SharePoint, which is available as a part of the university’s Microsoft 365 suite, is the best solution for sharing documents internally. It is supported by UMass Information Technology (IT).  

SharePoint makes it easy to collaborate by allowing you to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications. SharePoint’s integration with the Microsoft 365 suite, including commonly used applications like Teams and Outlook, makes it an ideal fit for groups working within Ecosystem.  

Documents for an External Audience  

If you are uploading documents on your Ecosystem site to make them available externally, a document cover page is required. A document cover page serves as a gateway to a document, giving visitors details (e.g., file size) before they download the file. 

For security reasons, Marcom has decided to use Google Forms and Microsoft (MS) Forms on Ecosystem sites.  

When creating a form, consider your audience. Is your audience external (e.g., prospective students) or internal (e.g., within a department or office)?  

Google Forms  

Marcom recommends using Google Forms for most external audiences. Google Forms allows users to easily collect information from external sources.  

MS Forms & MS Bookings  

MS Forms can be owned by groups, which makes them useful for internal purposes. MS Forms is configured to prevent the collection of personally identifiable information, which means you will not be able to collect email addresses; for that reason, Google Forms is often a better option.  

In the case of forms designed for booking or scheduling resources (e.g., tours), Marcom recommends MS Bookings, which has useful, built-in features for these purposes (scheduling, calendaring, email reminders, and more).  

Including Files  

Files should not be uploaded to forms. Uploading files creates security risks. It is more appropriate to provide (or ask for) links to shared documents. There are many widely available sharing tools that provide free user accounts with included storage:  

• MS SharePoint  
• MS OneDrive  
• Google Drive  
• Dropbox  

SharePoint is the preferred option at UMass Amherst.  

PDF Forms  

Some forms need to exist as PDFs to be filled out and submitted as hard copies or sent via applications (e.g., Docusign). When PDFs are necessary, they must meet accessibility guidelines. See the guidelines on PDFs and ADA compliance for more information.

For digital signage needs, Marcom recommends Xibo, an external enterprise product purchased by IT. Xibo is a dedicated digital signage software able to meet the specific needs of individual units.  

Xibo provides users at UMass Amherst with many benefits, including the flexibility to display different images on different monitors, the ability to use scheduling to create a dynamic digital display experience, and much more. Additionally, because Xibo is an external product, digital signage displays will remain active even while Ecosystem is going through upgrades.  

For complete information about using Xibo at UMass Amherst, contact IT.

Accessibility standards like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) exist to ensure digital content is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. Adhering to these standards is not optional—it’s essential for equity, legal compliance, and delivering a positive user experience.

PDF ADA Compliance

All UMass Amherst electronic documents distributed through websites are required to be accessible. Accessibility, according to the Office of Accessibility website, means a person with a disability has the same access to information as a person without a disability.  

Creating New PDFs  

When creating new documents, consider whether your content needs to be a PDF. If possible, PDFs should be converted into web content.  

If content needs to be a PDF, make sure the original document format is accessible before generating a PDF from it. MS Word has accessibility tools built in to simplify this process.

Be sure to include alt text for images used in digital PDFs. Best practice is to keep alt text under 125 characters to ensure compatibility with most screen readers. If more detail is needed, consider using long descriptions in the document body or as linked annotations.

Processing Noncompliant PDFs  

Many PDFs do not conform to the latest accessibility standards. Noncompliant files need to either be removed, recreated in a compliant format (e.g., HTML), shared internally, or mitigated.  

Again, content should be in HTML if possible, and PDF only if necessary. Content should never be both HTML and PDF.