The popular webcomic xkcd takes occasional good-natured jabs at academia, and this comic regarding university websites is achingly on point. Your institution’s website is your gateway to the world of your users. It is often the first contact that a user might have with your institution, whether they are a would-be student, prospective faculty member, or parent of a college hopeful. Your website should be a hub of vital information, easily navigable to users who will need to look up small (yet important) details like the institution’s address, contact information for university officials, a campus map or parking information. All too often, these details are occluded by flashy website features that don’t meet the immediate needs of the user and hinder the ready access to vital information. Because a university’s website is such a keystone to user interaction, optimizing your website will have direct and immediate benefits. Here are a few easy tips that will help improve your university website for both your staff and your users.
1) Know what your Users Need to Know
As the above webcomic suggests, there is often a marked disconnect between what users need from a university website and what the university website delivers. One reason this might be is because of how many users encounter the website and for what reason these encounters take place. As ECampus News explains, different users need different things. Prospective students might be looking for different information than current students or prospective faculty. Understanding who uses your university website and why is the first step towards creating an optimal user experience. A good way to gather data about user interactions is to survey users about the information they failed to find on your website. Such analysis lends critical insight into the weak spots of your website’s design and how you can best strengthen these weaknesses to serve your users.
2) Establish an Easily Managed Backend
Working with a CMS that is accessible, reliable, and intuitive will greatly increase your capabilities to manage and maintain your website.
In order to stay optimized, your university website will need to be updated frequently. Additionally, you may want to add custom features that further tailor the site to your users’ special needs and interests. Working with a CMS that is accessible, reliable, and intuitive will greatly increase your capabilities to manage and maintain your website. EdTech Magazine highlights several proven systems designed to do just that. Remember that the most frequent website updates will be factual information from non-technical sources; you might consider selecting a CMS that welcomes such users in order to streamline the many tasks that go into website management. Whichever CMS you choose, ensure that it is a system you will want to work with rather than a system that will cause stress and tension every time a small change is made.
3) Ensure Content is Available and Centralized
This might seem like the most basic of advice, but with so many department pages to account for, often the task of populating a university website can be a mammoth undertaking. This fundamental step is easily missed; so much so that Inside Higher Ed reminds universities to double check that it has been done before enabling social media outlets for their institution. If the sub-departments of your institution have generated their own websites (which is not uncommon at large universities), make certain that you link to these sites in an appropriate place. You want your university website to be a centralized hub of extensive and exhaustive information rather than simply the first—but perhaps not the definitive—place to look for answers.
4) Stay Current
Your institution’s website is an ongoing project and needs to be viewed as such. As the university grows and shifts, your website will need constant upkeep to stay current with these changes. Additionally, frequent updates will help the website’s SEO capabilities and keep students in the know. Make a plan for content updates and ensure that you and your staff stick to it. Create a system that will allow new content (like updated university schedules or policies) to coexist peacefully with static content (like the university’s address and contact information). You may want to also consider adding social media plugins to assist in this project; easily consumable updates can then be made with minimal website disruption.
Creating a university website that showcases all that your university has to offer while also meeting the needs of its wide array of users is a challenging task, but it can also be one of your institution’s greatest assets. Website design and content management can make (or break) a user’s experience, which can be a key factor in the buying decision of prospective students.
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