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Wednesday 11 May 2011

We need a new front page (again)

Back in July last year I blogged about our new front page for Student Development. At the time Alan made this comment...
I understand the problem, but it's a bit busy for my liking - too much text to scan, too many distractions. [...] If it were me, I'd go for less, but allow people to drill down easily. Sorry, I know you worked hard on this [...]
I think Alan was right (you can see the current page here) but I didn't want to change it again so soon after coming up with the redesign (not least because it was a big improvement on the previous version and that was the main thing at that point). My response at the time was that I'd let it run for a while and then revisit it - well now we have chance to revisit it, not least because of the renaming thing. I've had a look at a number of other similar services at other institutions including Manchester, Warwick, Lancaster and Durham, and as you will see if you click on the links they all use a similar structure at the top level, i.e. students, employers and staff - which I think is spot on. So that was what I discussed with Matt a couple of weeks ago and this is what he's come up with, which I think is great (he's blogged about it here)!


This is only a first draft though and I'd be really interested in your comments. We can use portlets on the left or right hand side to include contact details and news items but the main part of the screen is what you see above. The 'What's hot' bit we can update on a frequent basis (not sure about the name but you get the idea). The 'Follow us' links can link to the individual accounts or pages with multiple accounts listed (for instance - I might set up a Twitter account solely for jobs and internships advertising in addition to our current one). We also need to think about what we do with the next level down: Students and Alumni can link to a page which is broken up into succeed in your studies, gain experience and develop your career; the Employer section can link to our Employer Liaison pages (we'll be revamping these shortly); and the staff section can link to what is currently a very embryonic staff folder (I'll need to develop this pretty quickly). I'd also appreciate suggestions of what I could replace the nasty banner image with (see below - I've never liked it but changing it hasn't been a priority up to this point), maybe something a bit like the Environment Team's (not the fridge magnet idea but the separate images idea).


One concern I have is that, other than the 'What's hot' box, we've used the whole of the centre of the page for static items. Is that ok or should we put a dynamic news feed in? It looks quite fresh now but it could quickly feel dated if it remains relatively static.

I should also probably run all this by my colleagues in Marketing to check they're happy (note to self).

All suggestions gratefully received :)

20 comments:

  1. I really like the lay out and the themes as a whole, but (and this might just be me) the position of the links to "Students and alumni", "Employers" etc. look as though they correspond with the subtitles, "Succeed in your studies", "Gain experience" etc. directly above them.

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  2. Good point. Will have to think about that with @mjmobbs. Let me know if you have any suggestions re how to un-correspond them

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  3. This is SO much better, I really dislike the current pages, its not nice to look at and very hard to use!
    I dont know if it is just because I'm looking at this page in picture format but I found my eyes were very drawn to the bottom half of the page and not so much the employers/students/staff section at the top. This is obviously a good thing but for a moment I was confused as to where anything other than the 'whats hot' 'follow us' were. Matthew Mobbs is a genius!

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  4. Thanks ;) Am trying to get disqus fixed...

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  5. [I'm putting this comment here that I've been emailed for completeness]

    "I like the new look and think it makes it easier to navigate. I was wondering if we could change employers to ‘recruiters’ though (like Manchester and Lancaster) as I’m thinking of voluntary organisations that want to recruit volunteers that don’t fit into the ‘employer’ category but would fit into ‘recruiter’. This would also cover recruiters for internships, placements etc."

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  6. Thank goodness we're getting rid of the banner, I've disliked it for ages (I remember saying this to you when I was on helpdesk Stu) Never understood why a banner that features a part of the uni (Elements Bar) that has no relevance to SD but also no longer exists, was being used. I like the photo idea that the Environment Team use, but the photos on a white background make it look a bit sparse - coloured background would improve it.



    Really like the new page (good work Matt) it is very sleek. Personally, I'm not a fan of the 'what's hot' title, when I see things like that on serious websites I always think they're trying a bit to hard to sound down with the kids.

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  7. V helpful - thanks. Any suggestions for 'What's hot' (as you are down with the kids)? Maybe just our current 'Featured' title?

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  8. I'd agree with the comment that the Students/Employers/Staff gets a little lost as your eye is drawn down to the Follow Us and What's hot section which to me suggests that a lot of the content of the site is superfluous (which is not the case).

    I'd also be intrigued to know how it is being built as I hate using tables in a CMS system for anything other than their intended use (tabular data). When universities should be at the forefront of accessibility, tables to me just seem like a backward step.

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  9. I like it! Shame you can't run CrazyEgg to get some good data though.

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  10. Ha, wouldn't describe myself as down with the kids, but yeah maybe stick with 'featured' or if you want to be quirkier something like 'in the spotlight' with a little spotlight image (you're free to mock me if you think that idea is lame)

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  11. You said that last time http://goo.gl/O3LEw!

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  12. I never liked the banner image we were given. It's good to have less text on the home page. Could you switch the two headers ie the 3 SD themes and the target groups - as I think the themes need to be more prominently displayed.

    The 'follow us' seem to take a massive amount of space yet will remain static. So I would suggest reducing the space given to it and adding a news or events feed. Or adding a twitter feed in.

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  13. I'd be a bit worried that information for postgraduates might become even further buried down the tree than currently; I'm not sure if any of the three descriptors in the tagline quite speak to PGRs in the way that they will to undergrads. At least it is listed on the current homepage (although in a slightly out-of-kilter manner compared to the rest of the page), whereas on the new page students may have to travel several pages down to find any mention of resources for postgrads.

    I'm probably just being paranoid, but I think getting PGRs to visit the Careers Service website in the first place will be very difficult (just ask Martin about their careers engagement, or buy tomorrow's Independent), and if they can't find something very relevant very quickly they may just give up.

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  14. I think the layout is clear and that it works - thanks @mjmobbs:twitter :-) . Also, as there will be portlets with newsitems down the side, I don't think the page will appear too static, particularly with the 'featured' section - would it be possible to maybe have two items in there at any given time rather than just one? Also, will the themes at the top (succeed in your studies etc) be links as well? - I think it would work quite well if they were. I think it's also a really good idea to link to pages with multiple FB/Twitter accounts for students to choose from - this is something we are going to have to think about in terms of branding.

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  15. Thanks for the comment, v useful points - will have a think

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  16. Sorry, yes, you're quite right about that. Will give it some thought

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  17. Just thought, we should put the Matrix logo on the new website, doesn't appear at the moment does it??

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  18. Yes - guess it should go somewhere - maybe under about rather than front page though?

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