Our shop window needs refitting, it has to look awesome and here is why

For a while now the university website has needed a refresh from its current tired design. As the storefront to what the university has to offer, we’ve questioned whether the current site is reflective of the vibrant, modern culture rooted in Bedfordshire. Awesomeness however is hard to achieve, so let’s talk about some of the challenges we face and how we plan to overcome them.

Is less more? 
Choosing what to display in your window is tricky, I’m assuming it is a little like the poor merchandiser working for John Lewis at Christmas. Faced with hundreds of great products, but what to display, where and how? We are taking the approach of showcasing our key messages, the real need to know and the real conversion points for our users.

Deciding on key messages
Internally we talk about showcasing ‘key messages’, but for us the challenge is how do we get these across to the user in an implicit way? News highlights many of our values and harnesses subject matter around topics such as student experience and investment, in a way that gets it out to the public domain. Dressed as news however this content can often be overlooked, so in order to elevate it we will be presenting the news stories in the same format as any other content on the homepage, but with functionality to make it dynamically pull in those exciting achievements we shout about in press releases.

Driving users away

#bedsmas +University of Bedfordshire 

Convert, convert, convert is the aim, yet so often you work so hard to get the user on to a page you then send them off in another direction. Twitter feeds and Facebook comments were cool, once. They still have their place, but where you want to convert a user, do you want to be the one to turn the user away from the site. My only exception to this is Instagram, sometimes a little visual gratification works wonders in bringing otherwise seemingly dull content alive, but still, this doesn’t have a place on a homepage, unless of course it is a #bedsmas pic of me in a Santa suit.

Don’t put key content below the fold.. 
… was the hard and fast rule, the F shape, the don’t scroll, but times are changing. Look it is nearly 2017 and anything could happen, I mean a celebrity President, a female Prime Minister and talk of a wall, oh wait, actually it could be 1989! Now I’m not going to suggest these rules of the web are dead, but with over 40% of our users accessing our website via mobile, scrolling is the only way to navigate, and the way we write content for a stacking format needs to reflect that.

Search 
The wider topic of search is best left for a blog in itself, but I will say this. In 2017 we will revolutionised the way user’s find what they need on our website, and their journey through the site will be more personal and tailored, like we’ve come along and measured their inside leg. I will keep you in suspense on that one.

Purpose
Staff always want everything on the website, from seeing HR's Tracey in her wedding pictures to student information on how to hand an assignment in. But is this content right for an external, recruitment focused website? From the homepage we will be directing staff to the university’s intranet and current students to their learning resources, getting them off a site that’s content is (or at least should be) irrelevant to them.

Final thoughts
There are so many influences to a web project. You have your core users to think about, the users you don’t want on the site but have a say regardless, and the stakeholders who hold the purse strings. There are so many people having their two pence worth and so many to please, it is a tough old job being the one to get it right. Like being in the shadow cabinet, the jobs really important, but no one really wants to be the one to do it. Although I believe Jeremy Corbyn does have some staff in place now, and like us with our website, has a plan, let’s hope we deliver and our challenges are overcome.

Check back to www.beds.ac.uk before Christmas to see our new shop window, and we’d love to know what you think.