What particularly amused me about it to be honest is that I worked with both the University of Brighton (2nd place) and the University of Portsmouth (179th place) and many that don’t appear at all, using exactly the same methodology and approach. We did usability testing in the same way, we designed in the same way, we researched in the same way. This has left me bemused about how exactly one goes about creating a website that is perceived as being effective. It appears to be pot luck! ;)
Paul
P A U L @ B O A G W O R L D
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-----Original Message-----
From: Managing an institutional web site [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of No Name
Sent: 23 June 2005 13:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Top 100 university websites
The list also appears to exclude all non-English Universities - not a single Scottish, Welsh or NI institution that I can see. But I'm not too fussed about not knowing where my institution fits in this list:
I find the ranking list frustrating rather than insightful - very much like those "The Top 10 [insert category here], Ever" TV shows. Although the criteria are vaguely discussed in the article we've actually no idea how they were weighted, and Paul's point about the demographic is well made. It would however be nice to know just what will capture the interest of that demographic - if your priority is undergraduate recruitment of school leavers. It was good to see HEIST's response in the article about catering for disparate stakeholder groups: there's often a view from up on high that the web site is only a tool for recruiting teenagers.
It's nice to see the topics in the article being discussed in a mainstream publication, but it's much the same issues as we were banging on about circa 8 years ago when we were still having to make the case for universities to put any thought/resourcing into it at all. Perhaps it will help to remind those "up there" that the issue didn't go away when they let us buy a new web server all those years ago.
Regards,
Iain
On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:51:37 +0100, Paul Boag <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>Hi all,
>I don't know how many of you saw the Guardian online article today
discussing the top 100 university web sites:
>
>HYPERLINK
>"http://education.guardian.co.uk/university2005/advice/student/st
ory/0,15966,1510756,00.html"http://education.guardian.co.uk/university2005/a
dvice/student/story/0,15966,1510756,00.html
>
>I was just wondering what you thought of it. I have to say that even
though one of the sites I worked on came second, that I felt the whole thing seemed to be a little naive.
>
>The site was evaluated by only 13 students all of which were English A
level students. There is only one small mention in the entire article about the challenges faced by Universities to cater for a vast array of different people from Post Graduate research students to overseas students.
>
>Anyway if you want to know where your university ranked then check out:
>
>HYPERLINK
>"http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/specialreport/table/0,986
1,1510721,00.html"http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/specialreport/table
/0,9861,1510721,00.html
>
>Thanks,
>Paul
>
>
>Paul Boag [ Director ]
>H E A D S C A P E
>Web: strategy, usability, design, development, marketing.
>HYPERLINK "http://www.headscape.co.uk/"www.headscape.co.uk
>t: 01258 453889 | m: 07760 123 120
>more more web related articles visit my personal site at:
>HYPERLINK "http://www.boagworld.com/"www.boagworld.com
>
>
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