University Brings New Design to Web Site

The University of Arkansas plans to launch a new design of its home page in the coming month. The redesign, available for preview at http://www.uark.edu/rd_vcad/urel/wwwtest/ was prompted by a year-long analysis of aesthetics and usability of the old site.

“We analyzed traffic on the Web site during the previous year and conducted an online survey of our current visitors to see what worked well and what could be improved,” said Tysen Kendig, associate vice chancellor for university relations. “We had an overall approval rate of about 80 percent, but also found that we needed changes to make the site more aesthetically pleasing and functionally useful.”

The university’s Web-development team, led by Chris Nixon, director of communications technology service, looked at current national research about Web design and reviewed similar redesigns by peer institutions.

“Our next step was to take our research and start removing what we knew didn’t work, or wasn’t being used,” Nixon said. “We had more than 300 links on the old site, many of them duplicated over and again. The high number of choices overwhelmed visitors to our Web site and forced them straight to the A to Z index or to the search engine. We wanted our new design to eliminate redundancy and improve comprehension of the site.”

The new design retains the index and the search engine, which are available via links near the top right corner of the home page, but the rest of the navigation links on the home page are simplified to informational links such as the calendar of events and audience links such as future students, current students, faculty and staff, or visitors and parents.

The new design removed the rest of the navigational links that had been along the left side of the old home page and added them to the A to Z index. If a staff member wants to find “athletics,” she can look under the letter A in the index; and, if a student wants to find “Biology,” he can look under B. The new site also allows visitors to recommend additions or modifications to the A to Z index.

“We have also taken great strides to make the Web site as accessible as possible to our visitors,” Nixon said. “To help us test and meet this goal, we are working with the Center for Educational Access at the university. Not only does a fully accessible site help students of all ability levels, but it also provides the university with positive side effects. For example, our search engine rankings should go up, improving our exposure and rankings for the relative searches.”

On the aesthetic side, the new Web site is making use of Flash technology to provide slide shows depicting events and scenes on campus. Two new Web cameras have also been installed on the campus, one looking down on the Fulbright Peace Fountain and the second overlooking the Union Mall. Visitors to the second Web camera can zoom in on the Chi Omega Fountain or pan to the Leflar Law Center.

“We expect a lot of students will stop by the fountain and call home so their parents can see how they’re doing,” Kendig said. “Both of the new Web cameras show the campus in real time, and we expect lots of use from alumni who no longer live in Arkansas but who want to see the trees changing color in the fall and the first blanket of snow in the winter.”

The new site also incorporates multimedia tools, such “social bookmarks,” which allow visitors to bookmark the university’s home page and news feeds on social networks such as Facebook, Digg, and Del.icio.us. Initial steps are also being made to provide online material specifically geared to handheld devices such as a BlackBerry or iPhone.

“The current home page is only two years old, but online services and assets are expanding so fast that we felt a strong need to improve what we already had,” Nixon said, adding that this soft launch was just a first step in the redesign. “We will persistently gather feedback from the site so we can make modifications down the road, based on what our users want and expect.”

The soft launch of the new design is intended to allow visitors to the university’s Web site a chance to practice on the new site and to see whether there are changes or tweaks that can be made.

The new design will be moved to the main university address, http://www.uark.edu/ in September.