College Web Site Design
As classes start back up, I am reminded of some of the particular content organization challenges that college web sites face; and I’m reminded of this comic from xkcd:
There seems to be some consensus regarding the disconnect between the messages being sent and the information requested. I wonder if there is some kind of data - perhaps we could call them “analytics” - that could tell us which pages are accessed, and with what frequency, and for how long? It might do wonders for helping us generate web content that serves identifiable and actual needs.
And I’m not talking about the W&J web designer here either - who actually does have analytical data. It still comes down to the folks who make decisions about content and whether those decisions are based on data or other inexplicable intuitions. Intuition can actually be valuable in terms of design - but content creation should be based upon data.
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Comments:
Hehe - you’re right! I’m getting sloppy on sabbatical. Thanks for keeping me honest?
The constant conflict between what we want readers to “want” to know, and what our readers actually do “want” to know. It’s the same with newspapers. Finding information on almost any college website is an exercise in frustration I have found. Not even the search feature at W&J is very useful, in my opinion.
Hmm, not attributing the comic to xkcd? Slacking on proper etiquette there Fee