How unique should your institution’s website really be?
A few weeks ago I was in a new business pitch with a couple colleagues talking about a website redesign project for a small (but growing) public college. We were discussing the topic of information architecture and how mStoner goes about the process of reorganizing a college website. One of the participants from the college had a few questions about how it all works – which I’ll paraphrase…
Potential Client: “Do you have an existing information architecture template that you use for a college that you’ll simply apply to our school?”
Me: “Nope. But what we do have is lots of experience doing this and a lot of ideas about how to initially create the framework for an IA that flexible, scalable and most importantly understandable. Some percentage of it is the same as other school websites (and should be) and some percentage is entirely unique to your school (and also should be).”
Potential Client: “I see. What percentage of our information architecture should be the same as other schools and what percentage should be totally unique?”
Me: “Ummm…”
I have to admit that I’d never thought about IA in terms of absolute percentages before. Since that question though, I’ve thought about it a lot. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
The top-level information architecture of your website should be 2/3 the same as other schools and 1/3 unique to your school. That’s obviously not set in stone but I think it’s a helpful guide for thinking about the global navigation of your site.
Let’s assume your site is composed of three types of navigation: topic-based, audience-based and task-based. If those three things are in place you can begin to figure out what should follow the model of other schools and what should be distinctly your own.
Topic-based
Schools interested in reaching prospective students should ALL have the following links in their topic nav:
About Us
Academics
Admission
Campus Life (or something of the sort)
News & Events
Giving (or something of the sort)
Once the basics are covered it’s more a matter of choosing what’s right for a given institution. If sports are a reasonably large part of the on campus experience then ‘Athletics’ should have a place in the navigation. We also place ‘Research’ in the topic-based navigation for many clients. And in the past we’ve included ‘Arts’, ‘Institutes’, ‘Service’ and/or ‘Libraries’. The idea being, we’re sure that the first six links listed are necessities – from there it’s much more a matter of which links belong on your top-level navigation. And that’s a decision that driven by the messages you’re trying to send prospective students, the personality of your school, the goals of your website and the tasks you’re trying to facilitate.
Audience-based
Should definitely have:
Current Students
Faculty & Staff
Parents
Alumni
After that, it’s wide open. in previous projects we’ve included, “Neighbors”, “Business Community”, “Managing Committee” and countless others. Once you’ve done the work of identifying your audiences it makes sense to highlight them prominently on navigation of this sort. And yes, the omission of a ‘Prospective Students’ link was intentional.
Task-based
This navigation is a whole lot less prescriptive than the other types. It should include a link to ‘Contact’ and a link to ‘Search’. Other than that it should include as many other links to get stuff done as you have. “Apply Online”, “Directory”, “Site Map”, etc.
Obviously this is just the tip of the proverbial ice-burg but I think it’s a nice, neutral place to start a discussion about information architecture for a school’s global navigation.
Later in the same conversation with the potential client we talked about how these percentages might apply to design. What percentage of the design should look like other schools? What percentage should be totally different? That response merits a blog posting of its own – which is forthcoming.
“And yes, the omission of a ‘Prospective Students’ link was intentional.”—Why?
Posted on June 4, 2008 by Todd
At least at William & Mary ... because the whole site is for prospective students. I recall the the first “new business pitch” Patrick and Voltaire made in Williamsburg and their comment that prospective students don’t self-identify (either that, or they don’t understand the nomenclature). We based our decision not to build an audience gateway for prospects on professional guidance from mStoner. And, during our usability testing phase with 15 high school juniors, none asked why we hadn’t included a “prospective student” link.
Posted on June 4, 2008 by Susan T. Evans
Thanks Susan - couldn’t have said it better myself.
We organize most (if not all) of the topic-based navigation around the expectations of prospective students. So essentially, the whole site is organized with them in mind and built around making the information appealing to them.
I feel like that to then include a link specifically for prospective students would imply that only the pages linked to from there are for prospectives. Our goal is to get them exploring lots and lots and lots of places on the website - not just the ones we happen to highlight for them in an audience-based gateway page.
Posted on June 5, 2008 by Patrick
@ Susan and Patrick - Thanks for your comments.
Posted on June 6, 2008 by Todd