Corporate website realignment
The Digital and Print Media unit has made some exciting new changes to the University's Corporate Website (CWS). This realignment includes changes to the site’s information architecture (hierarchy of content) and visual interface (page design and functionality) that makes information easier to find.
We have also attempted to make the website more engaging by using an interactive information console on the home page.
The updated website is due to be launched and go live in the last week of February 2009.
This page highlights some of the key changes that have been made to the University's CWS.
- Aims of the CWS realignment
- Redevelopment methodology
- Website addresses (URLs)
- Fixed page widths
- Home page
- Landing pages
- Navigation
- Where to from here?
- Feedback
Aims of the CWS realignment
Increase ease of navigation by:
- grouping information for key audiences
- restructuring content
- improving the navigation
- ensuring that URLs (website addresses) use proper words to indicate where the user is within the website.
Methodology
The website realignment was conducted after a rigorous analysis of the existing site. This included:
- examining the information architecture of the site from the viewpoint of audience needs
- liaising with key business stakeholders for each of the sites
- conducting user testing on the existing site – with school students, current University students, general and academic staff and members of the general public,
- using the results of this user testing as a benchmark
- closely examining web statistics for the existing site to analyse typical patterns of navigation and to assess the most popular sites
- building a test website, rewriting content where necessary
- conducting another round of user testing on the test site
- making adjustments to the site based on the results of the user testing.
The results of the final user testing indicated a significant improvement in navigation (as seen in the table below).
User testing results
Users were asked to perform 51 types of tasks, with 100 tasks being performed in total. The 'before' and 'after' results are shown in the table below.
Old site |
New site |
Improvement percentage |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Task successful | 69 |
88 |
+28% |
| Task failed | 31 |
12 |
+61% |
| Time taken | 75s |
45s |
+40% |
| Number of clicks | 6 |
4 |
+33% |
Website addresses (URLs)
Many of the URLs have been changed in order to clearly identify a user's location within the website and also to assist search engine results. For example, 'fstudent' has been changed to 'future_students'.
Shortcut URLs that redirect to the appropriate site have been, and can be, made if a particular address needs to be published in print.
Fixed page widths
Many of the pages within the University’s website necessarily contain large amounts of text. In order to help readers the website has been redesigned to a fixed width so that pages have a limited number of words on one line – displaying consistently across different computers and browsers.
Home page
The University’s new home page comprises a prominent interactive rich media display area (the console) above a site map that is categorised by audience needs and by tasks (see image below). This navigation table is designed to be intuitive and usable, especially for repeat customers, and is great for search engine optimisation (the University's sites should rank higher on Google).
Clicking on one of the eight category headings in red type takes the user to a category landing page – a page that contains links to all of the pages contained within that category.
The links in blue are the most popular links in the categories and take the user to a specific page or site, skipping the category landing page.
The console
The console can display a lot of information using a fixed area revealed by clicking on a side tab. The display slides across the screen to reveal the latest information about that issue. The tabs also reflect the University’s strategic goals under the headings of News; Research; Study; International; and Events.
The console also contains an introductory six-second slideshow that showcases different aspects of the University of Sydney. The user can choose to turn the slideshow off.
Category landing pages
The category landing pages have a clear structure to identify supporting content. Photographs and text support and assist in navigation.
The future students and current students landing pages have been completely reorganised (see image below) so that users can find information based on whether they are domestic or international students, and interested in undergraduate or postgraduate information.
Navigation
Several new features have been incorporated into the new site.
Links in the masthead (see image below) navigate to popular places within the website. The white links – ‘Home’, ‘Library’, ‘Maps’, ‘Media’ and ‘Contacts’ – are persistent navigation links that appear on every page. There is also a gold link (with a ‘plus sign’ next to it) that shows the site currently being browsed.
When the gold link is clicked, a ‘sitemap expander’ feature appears (see image below), splitting the masthead and revealing the home page categories and their relevant links. The plus sign becomes a ‘minus sign’.
Tabs
Tabs, which run horizontally across the top of the page, have been modified to make them more intuitive. When the mouse rolls over a tab the text becomes gold, the tab becomes a little taller, and any menu items ‘under’ the tab become visible (see image below).
It is now easier to tell at a glance which section of the website is being browsed. In addition to being taller, the active tab (if one has been actually clicked) is coloured white with red text (see image below).
Menus
Changes to the menu structure improve the way information is organised and reduce screen clutter. When a menu item has sub-menu items, these are hidden. A small plus sign next to the menu item indicates the presence of sub-menus. When the plus sign is clicked the sub-menus are revealed. When the menu item is clicked, that item’s page opens and the sub-menu items are also revealed.
Greater differentiation of menu and sub-menu items has been achieved through indentation of the sub-menu items. Again, these changes have been shown to ease navigation.
Page footer
The page footer has been updated to include a local site map that helps to provide a local context. We expect this to be especially useful in large sites.
Where to from here?
The realignment of the University’s corporate website places us in a good position to update the website for the implementation of the Brand Project, providing a solid structure and improved navigation.
Many of the changes will be available for roll out to other University sites in the current template once they have been bedded in and any gremlins ironed out.
Feedback
We would really welcome your feedback on the new CWS. If you have the time, please complete the feedback form.