FORT BELVOIR, VA--Traffic on the Army Acquisition Support Center's (USAASC) website has significantly increased this year, but exactly which website customers visited is a source of confusion.
USAASC launched its new website and social media effort in March. Visits are up more than 60 percent. In June alone, the website had an increase of more than 20,000 visits compared to the same time last year. However, a few members of the acquisition workforce have expressed concerns that information on the website has not been updated.
In actuality, those visitors are still going to the old website and probably don’t realize it, explains the USAASC webmaster.
“As it is set up now, we have, in essence, two websites. The new website that was launched in March and the old one we keep up until the transition is complete,” explained Jefferi Lee, a contractor supporting USAASC as its webmaster. “We are finding that a few people end up going to the old site through bookmarks or older documents. Once people click their old bookmarks, they bypass the new homepage and are now travelling through the old site.”
“We sent out a notice to everyone that USAASC changed to a new website,” said Robert Alton, USAASC’s Social Media lead, “but we didn’t tell them to update their bookmarks. Now we are.”
Lee added that the new website has the most up-to-date information, and while the previous website is also updated, it is not done nearly as often as the new one.
“We do try to update priority information on both sites, but given the volume of everything, we can’t do it all,” Lee said.
To remedy the situation, USAASC is in the process of installing an update that will automatically forward visitors from the old website to the new one.
“We have a two-step process. First, if you go to the old site, you will be automatically redirected to the homepage of the new site. The second phase of the process is to have you redirected from the old site to its comparable page on the new site. That phase will take more time to complete,” Lee explained.
In the meantime, workers should start at the USAASC homepage to ensure they are arriving at the correct website.
“The best option is to use the homepage (http://asc.army.mil) as a portal to everything else on the site. That’s it. Don’t worry about anything that follows it. If you use the homepage as the portal, you will have the most up-to-date information. Once you find the page with the information you need, update your bookmark with the address of that page,” Lee explained.
In addition to the new website, USAASC is active on the following social media sites:
• Access AL&T;at http://live.usaasc.info
• Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/usaasc
• Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/usaasc
• Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/usaasc
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