Comments on: No news is good news

By: Katherine Ross (@katheross)

Katherine Ross (@katheross) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:44:00 +0000

Including news can be useful for the important overseas market. There is robust evidence to suggest that our international audience really do like the ‘pr stuff’ in order to assess a university’s worth. Check out http://www.pku.edu.cn/ – while admittedly chinese websites are strange to our eyes – note the entire home page is given over to news.

By: Vince

Vince — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 06:32:56 +0000

Yeah, I’d a bit of a think on it since I get the ‘Beside the Corrib’, the yearly Who’s Who of I don’t care from NUI, Galway. And always wonder where the rest of it is. Where is the newsy bit that cause people to form community. Basically, why are they reinventing the wheel when they have what facebook and twitter would kill.
If you were to nail a description of ALL communications from a university. ‘NO FUN’ would cover it.
They simply don’t see themselves as a community, a whole community. They only see the aspect of building the cathedral stone upon stone.

By: Norman Gray

Norman Gray — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:35:21 +0000

Ah, so it was, in the link mentioned in the very first line of the posting. Ahem. I’ll get my coat.

By: universitydiary

universitydiary — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:19:28 +0000

Yes, it’s a good one – and it was mentioned in this blog a year or so ago also.

By: Norman Gray

Norman Gray — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 10:15:15 +0000

Above, 1000 words; here, picture: http://www.xkcd.com/773/

By: universitydiary

universitydiary — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:33:54 +0000

Actually, I wonder whether your assumption about how people navigate is necessarily right. I’ve looked at some of the hit statistics of some home pages (where I could get this information), and what it told me that much larger numbers than we might imagine first experience a university website through its home p[age. Some do indeed get right into the inner areas of the site via Google, but quite a few don’t. And for those, what they experience is often wildly confusing.

By: gail

gail — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:44:42 +0000

While i agree that some (many) homepages are a bit useless, I think this post about news misses several key points.

The first is that most users don’t enter through an org’s homepage anyway – they come from Google and other sources and ‘deep link’ into the site. Optimising content for search engines and working out a decent navigation are two key things that will help users find you and the content they need.

By the time users get to the homepage (which they may do, out of curiosity) there should definitely be some percentage of non-static content there, to show that the place has a pulse.

News – even if it doesn’t reach the standard of ‘news’ as defined by journalists – serves to show that the org is happenin’ place that takes pride in celebrating its students and academics’ achievements. nothin’ wrong with this, I reckon.

Writing up news and announcements into short articles provides a very useful landing page for social media efforts. I always include useful links and info in my articles and direct my FB and Twitter posts there. Social media now routinely measures in the top 5-6 of our referrer sources in Google Analytics.

I’ve been designing Higher Ed websites for 15+ years, and my homepages are usually about 40-50% rotating content. I do agree with the author’s plea for good white space and excellent navigation site-wide — but don’t throw the news out. Make it interesting, useful and relevant and it will serve you well.

By: cormac

cormac — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:19:16 +0000

I agree with all the above, I have always thought that most users will be looking for a particular staff member, academic course or department. That said, i quite like our new college site, any comments?
http://www.wit.ie/

By: Lesley

Lesley — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:33:21 +0000

What amazes me about website development for Universities is that often the design is by consultants who decide that websites are for PR not to be of practical use. As someone who tried to have some input into the new one at my University I was continually ignored by the consultants who felt that they knew better – oh well what would I know I was only an academic with 25 years of experience and who designed websites and elearning to be practical and user friendly. To me that would be the related problem – using consultants who dod not have enough knowledge of the systems, want to provide a solution they used elsewhere and who do not ask the staff and students what they need as other stakeholders.

I do like Vince’s idea that a more tabloid approach to outing scandals might draw the crowds more but would it be user friendly??

By: J R Berg

J R Berg — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:17:23 +0000

Could not agree more. As a PhD student at Leeds (one of your fine examples), I cringe whenever I am told that ‘you can find it on the website.’ – NO I CAN’T.