This Designer’s Post-Launch Wish List

When we send a website out into the world, there are a few things I always hope to see when I check in with it a few months later. Maybe surprisingly, not much of what I look for deals with design. I’m mostly checking to make sure the design is supporting content that supports good user experience.

1. Genuine content
This item is most criminally abused on homepages. I’ve seen “Achievement,” “Innovation,” and “Commitment to Excellence” paired with students happily studying under trees a disheartening number of times. If a descriptive slideshow is the route you’re taking for your homepage’s feature area or banners on secondary pages, make sure the photography is impactful and the statements are artful and particular to your school. William & Mary does this well. Or go Wofford’s route and don’t use captions at all. Communicating with real people comes with a significant amount of pressure. If you don’t feel it, you may not be talking to anyone. (Bonus: watch for a list of my favorite examples of overused stock photography next week!) Update: it’s here!

2. Appropriate use of “Welcome!” messages
I’m not sure if the following example will put things into perspective or merely point out that I’m hyper-sensitive about social interactions, but one of my personal peeves is getting welcomed into Best Buy. It’s a giant retailer, not a bed and breakfast, and as a city-dweller I’m immediately suspicious of friendly strangers. Lesson: use welcome messages sparingly — greet people when it’s appropriate. Not everyone is visiting you, that department or the student blogs page for the first time. They’re likely going to gloss over anything that treats them as though they’ve just met, at which point the welcome message is just filler or, worse, an obstacle to finding what a visitor is really looking for. Additionally, red carpet treatment isn’t always wanted. Sometimes people just want to find the printer cartridges, pay and leave.

Of course, this isn’t to say that being friendly isn’t important. If your web design team has done its job, your site will already be friendly in tone and style, the information architecture will aid people in their search, and the back-end will keep their browsing experience running smoothly. That’s genuinely helpful and welcoming.

2. Clarity above cleverness
Vague, jargon-laden and cutesy language obscures information you’re trying to promote (and visitors are trying to find). Sometimes these things are unavoidable: what your institution might refer to as “Continuing Education” another might call “Adult Learning,” and the synonymity might not be readily apparent to newcomers. Or maybe you have a sidebar you must call Romani Ite Domus because Steve H. (’79) saw Life of Brian the same year he was editing your alumni magazine, and that’s what the beloved section has been called for the past 30 years. If this is the case, be as clear as possible with that section’s headlines, photos and teasers.

3. Fun with photography!
Not every department banner image has to be a faculty-student interaction shot. Experiment with abstract representations of an academic major. Find something with the right fit for that page. Use a page of handwritten differential equations, close-ups of distinctive architecture, and artwork instead of artists.

4. Properly-sized photography
Never squish a photo to fit. Crop that baby to size.

5. Nothing labeled “Quick Links”.
“Quick Links” means so many different things on innumerable other sites that the links in these sections are no longer “quick.” Those new to your particular grouping of “Quick Links” are suddenly tasked with figuring out why those links are grouped together and what they’re supposed to do. Hopefully, they’re at least related to each other in some real way and aren’t simply a diplomatic dumping ground for parties unable to cope without a piece of the global navigation. (Ooh! Nerd snap!)

Posted by Laurel Hechanova
Additional Posts (11)
Categories: