Business School Website

Hi John, this site has all the necessary information of a good school website, but the design, excuse me for being blunt, needs a lot more work. You seem to have talent and be capability of making this into a strong design. Here are some of my suggestions and a link to an article showcasing higher education websites http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/19/showcase-of-academic-and-higher-education-websites/:

Overall I like the design. There are a number of small tweaks to the design and layout that could improve the quality that the brand portays.

Please don't take the number of comments I've made on the graphics negatively. I won't be offended if you ignore them all, as they are only minor adjustments to an already adequate design.

I agree with the previous commend that a gradient would work well on both the top-link bar and the left-hand bar, though please don't make the mistake that most people do when making use of a gradient of going from white to your colour. Your gradient really should be more subtle, perhaps from a pastel tone to your current colour. This gives depth without distracting from the real purpose and aim of the site. Also make sure this is done with background graphics for accessibility rather than making graphics for each option.

P.S. Apologies that note 1 appeared on image 3 so many times, it didn't appear to be saving the option, but now won't let me remove the duplicates. :o|

Good luck!

Overall, without focusing on the design because I think that has been discussed, I think that the navigation needs to be vetted. I do not know where I need to focus first: top OR left navigation.

This is extremely important. It seems that the main focus of attention is centered on the left nav while the useful tools and secondary information (news, contact, etc.) are located on the top nav.

You also list the Apply, Programmes and Prospectus links where I think consequential information is located: at the top.

Search is in a strange place. I know more and more sites are placing Search as an element within a navigation but it's true place is should be above, front and centre.

The placement of the left nav arrows seems a little confusing as well. They are meant to convey an emotional response in the user: "Click here!" while you are using them more as a functional object.

Colour. There should be greater colour separation between both navs. Primary (or global) should stand out more since that's what you want people to focus on.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

ef®en

Let me start by saying that I am a student looking for a university to continue my education. That is I visit lots of university websites.

1. The prospectus - you say that you want more people to download the prospectus. But on the homepage it is now that easy to locate it, it is not one of the first things one will notice. I would put the image of the prospectus you have on the prospectus page on the home page so that it attracts people's attention. The webpage says that you can download it or have it emailed to you. But I could not find a way to download it, I only see the form to request one, should I feel the form in order to download it? It doesn't make sense. Also, why the phone number is a compulsory field, I am sure a lot of people would not feel comfortable providing this information;
2. I really like the menu on the left, although I find it a little bit misleading. The arrows before the items imply that by clicking on them I will open some submenu like the one for Our programmes, I was surprised when I was redirected to another page. Also, I did not expect another menu to open when I hover on the programmes, Then this submenu has an arrow after each item and I thought that by hovering on this items some subsubmenu will open again but it didn't happen. That is the navigation is not really intuitive.
3. It is fairly easy to locate the information on the front page but I cannot say the same for the subpages. The header is far too busy. First of all, I would definitely put the useful links in the footer, this way the header will not look that busy.
4. In the global navigation you should think of way to indicate the currently selected subpage - different background color or anyhting...
5. The slideshow on the front page - too fast as there is a lot of text, not enough time to read it and no way to browse through the images and go to a previous slide if you want to see something.

Hope this helps.

The notes will hopefully detail specific comments, but in general the greatest issue is how packed the site looks. A small amount of extra white space could make the page much easier on the eyes, and this could be afforded by reducing the length of some of the headings.

Generally, the colour scheme works well and appears to fit in with the logo you have to work with.

The menu on the left seems to take up far too much of the page, and seems to dramatically affect the amount of space you have to work with. This could possibly be improved by reducing the length of the text used (see notes for further).

Great job overall. As you can tell, my only real concerns are with the headers.

I will focus my review on the left hand navigation as I feel that there is A LOT going wrong with this.

The navigation is quite confusing. It's implementation violates a lot of best practices.

• First of all, the general appearance of the navigation implies an accordion behaviour. In particular, the >> and v graphics to the left of the links strongly imply accordion behaviour. In addition, the way that "Our Programmes" is opened up is exactly what is expected of an accordion. However, the menu does not behave as an accordion. Far from it actually. When I clicked on "Student Zone/Change of address" I really expected the nav to open up to display a set of sub-options in the same appearance style as the sub-options to "Our Programmes".

  Whats more confusing is that the page that I was directed to after I clicked on "Student Zone/Change of address" DID implement an accordion menu ?! Now I started getting really confused. I actually checked the page in a different browser to see if it was my browser that was playing up.

• There is no visual element (other than the cursor changing to a hand) to indicate which of the navigation elements have sub-options. The >> to the left implies that they all have sub-options but they dont.

• In the second level navigation that pops up, all of the elements have a right arrow at the end of their row. This indicated that they all have a third level navigation, but they don't.

• The navigation does not degrade gracefully. With javascript turned off You get an enormous list at the top of the website with no styles applied. I have done jobs on University websites myself, you will be surprised how many users visit the page with javascript turned off. Actually for University/College websites it is generally a very strict requirement for the website to degrade gracefully for javascript disabled and styles disabled.

• Why is the search a navigation item?

The design is too cluttered for me to understand what is going on.

The text should be larger to enable scanning and the color scheme doesn't work too well

the design inspires an initial response of 'what is this site about?'

Overall I think this is a very functional website. Know that there is a lot of information to supply, but this makes it a little overwhelming. The first concept works the best for me, the other samples didn't look as pleasing to the eye. Wonder what it would look like to have more people holding hands to stretch out to the edge of the page. Great for the student to move around. Good job!

The name in the header can be left aligned along with logo to get attraction and appeal

Side menu need not have scroll

Footer missing

Try to reduce the width of the side menu

Design can be enriched with web 2.0 a little

Hello John,

Further education is a really interesting offering in terms of user engagement. As you know the user tasks and audience groups can be so varying.

On a macro level there is little wrong with the site and much to be happy about. As a user the tasks are clearly set out by audience groups, you even have deeper level links straight to (presumably) the top courses offered. So architecture wise the home page works well.

On a micro level (the picky stuff, which is personal so ignore if you disagree), much of the content feels constricted by a lack of 'white' space,

the nav needs more padding and just finishing touches.

the "menu20" needs either a pixel or two more height (or even better no height specified) as in my FF there is a scrollbar.

I dont believe two moving pieces of media on one page is effective from a users readability perspective so the 'need some academic guidance' would change to a static image - the size of the multimedia is lost anyway (imho).

A couple of other users mention the lack of footer, as you know the role of the footer has morphed into being a secondary navigation tool, at its most basic it is at least a source of info, a tool for your users - you expect to see a webmaster contact, a last updated date and in my own institutions case essential legal information such as copyright, ESOS, CRICOS info etc. so from the legal side of things it might be worth investigating.

From a user task view I think the bigger problems are on the secondary level landing pages. there is the top bar which seems to be quick links then a big swaythe of 'useful links' perhaps these can be categorised and built into a more useful lighter global nav/header. the multimedia on the same billing as the Schools header is odd. As a more 'standard' layout for the lower level pages i'd expect to see the header with the global nav underneath (the home, programmes links), nav on left as you have the content central but then the multimedia below or above the quick links. The page is 900px, perhaps a 960 grid could be implemented to allow more space, although a content review and cleanup may reap wonders for you.

Hope these haverings are in a small way useful, the fact you are on here shows you have the right intentions for your users.

Ross

Hey, About the look of all 3 pic: not very modern or by current trends. Try to use full vivid colors full of life... a happier outfit for the website. If the students are not looking for a traditional university (either due to funds or grades etc), I'm sure they are looking to have fun and probably they want to know also what kinds of activity are there: sports, music, clubbing, bars I suggest a real video tour in witch you present the real life from that school. Don't forget to integrate the social icons (sharing and follow) If there are international students maybe you could integrate a area for them to help finding accommodation/jobs and integrate better. I hope this was helpful. Good luck

P.S. maybe you can somehow integrate the logo in your layout?!