Last week we gave the campus community - - faculty, staff, students, alumni and members of the greater Asheville community – an opportunity to give us feedback and ideas about how we can improve the university’s core Web site. Five, hour-long “Listening Sessions” were staged on April 17.
We listened a lot, and we learned a lot. But we need a bit more input from students and alumni, so we’re launching a short online survey to make sure we have good input.
Everyone, especially students and alumni, are welcome to fill out the survey and be eligible for a drawing for a $50 gift card from the UNC Asheville Bookstore.
Just log onto Link to survey and submit the survey to be eligible for a drawing. See, we’re serious about wanting your ideas! So keep them coming.
Now, here’s a recap of some of the things we heard during the “Listening Sessions.”
Provide relevant content
• Retire old content,
• Improve search capabilities,
• Limit university jargon and organize content around topics not the university’s organizational structure
• Provide “filterable” content that can be used on Google Calendar
• Make sure the second tier pages have has much content and thought as the admissions site or the homepage.
Demonstrate through evidence
• Saying is not enough, need to show it and it needs to be more interactive
• Add a “bragging” section to highlight important quick facts
• Consider video clips that explain what a liberal arts education is
• Show successful alums and what they have achieved thanks to UNC Asheville
• Show Study Abroad students and their activities, as well as student groups and other activities that students take part in
Content Caretaking
• Consider a student team to keep pulse of what’s going on and produce content
• Update content more often
• Create more design and content consistency across departmental pages
• Provide guidance on site development, web styles, guiding principles
• Need to have some password protected segments of the site
Culture, Authenticity and Uniqueness
• Need to have a “street-level” view of campus, not just the same “mountain” view
• Don’t use generic images of Asheville, it’s not the Chamber of Commerce
• Site should feel comfortable
• Convey the flavor of the campus and of Asheville with photos, music, the coffee houses downtown
• Show how professors and students interact, “I overheard a student saying the Dean had ‘Facebooked’ them.” That needs to be conveyed. Professors here call
students if they are not in class for a few days.
Internal and External Audiences
• Site has to be outward facing but with an internal utility. It’s failing at tring to be both. It’s not serving either effectively
• Need to connect with community members who didn’t got to UNC Asheville
• Need little places that show this connection to community and the world, things that are experientially-learning based, service learning, internships, study abroad.
1 comment:
One suggestion that I can think of (if it is not too late) is to re-work the "search" button! That has been, in my experience, least helpful way of getting where you want to be because it only searches through articles about what you are searching for, not web pages. I think that if someone is looking for the website of a particular professor or for financial aid and they can not find it by going through the links that they should be able to find it with the search button.
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