In the same way department stores dress their windows each season, showcasing new merchandise and reflecting global trends to sell their wares, our virtual shop window needs constant attention, investment and redevelopment.

By Louise Szczerb

Recently I found myself in a meeting of Program Directors at Pardes and I reported that we were shortly due to be relaunching our website. A colleague quipped, “You always seem to be re-launching the website.”

At first, I questioned the statement and then said, “Yes we are, and isn’t it fantastic!”

Shortly after I joined Pardes six and half years ago, we embarked on a major branding overhaul. It was a mammoth task: finding the right design agency, getting budgets approved and involving those at every level including board members in Israel and North America, staff, faculty, students and alumni across the world. The process culminated about three years later with a striking new look (which won design accolades in the Israel Design Week exhibition) and the launching of an entirely new website: front-end, back-end and everything in between.

Since that point we have launched a number of supporting mini-sites for standalone programs and recruitment campaigns – and today, four years after beginning work on the ‘new website’, we are launching a ‘new new website’ for Pardes.

Thankfully for all involved, the creation of the ‘new new website’ has been a much shorter, cheaper and more straight-forward process. The time, energy and resources we spent four years ago were worth every penny. The logo and branding portfolio have stood the test of time and have easily been reapplied and the seemingly endless rounds of emails spent untangling the cumbersome navigation that had come to characterize our ‘old website’, meant that this time around we were simply tweaking and fixing minor programming bugs.

But undertaking the creation of the ‘new new website’, has been about more than just looks. We as organization have evolved to more quickly recognize the changing needs of our audience and react accordingly. The new site is mobile-responsive, it uses a number of new external platforms to present information in a more user-friendly way, for example through interactive course schedules, and has integrated Elmad, our online learning library, which was initially a small student initiative, fully into the main website.

In the same way department stores dress their windows each season, showcasing new merchandise and reflecting global trends to sell their wares, our virtual shop window needs constant attention, investment and redevelopment.

Yes, we are always working on a ‘new website’, but that’s a good thing for the institution at every level. And guess what I’m working on tomorrow? Another ‘new website’…

Louise Szczerb is the Director of Communications at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and has been working in nonprofit marketing and communications for over 13 years.