Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Start by asking yourself what the purpose of the site is. Who visits? Why do they visit? What are you trying to communicate? What action do you want your site visitor to take? How does the target audience find your site?

It sounds like you are responsible for a site-within-a-site, rather than the entire website, so answering these questions may not be quite so straightforward. All the more reason you should be diligent in answering the strategic questions.

Then ask yourself how you'll know when the site (or your section of it) is successful. Is it just student comments, or are there some harder metrics? (This will obviously depend on your objectives.)

And as for another redo after just a year, it's totally dependent on whether you're meeting your objectives or not. If you are, don't change it. If you're not, change it as soon as possible.

It was easy enough to find the Ryerson site, but we don't know what section of the site is yours, so the comments are necessarily going to be quite general.

Start with the feedback - what specifically is a problem for them? Ask them for how it could be better (possibly with a comparison to another site that they like more)? Next, consider if their feedback is relevant. Everyone has opinions, but will the website as-is make them look elsewhere for information, or is it simply "not-as-cool" as another website. One way to test this is to ask your focus group to perform some specific tasks (i.e., "Find all the classes we offer on alchemy") and see if the problem is functional (can't perform the task easily) or perceived (can perform - but it's dull looking).

As for the question about providing information in other formats - the answer is test it. Have you tried a mobile website/Ryerson app for smart phones? Video answers to common questions? A better search facility? Student-produced content?

From the information provided and as pointed out by mgoodman this is most probably a site within a site and I would assume this is a department or organization within the university . If you have access to the code which I feel you have, try to do A/B or multivariate testing with analytics focusing on what you want people to do on your site and set up goals to find out which version of your site performs best rather than listening to feedback from people. Of likes and dislikes there should be no disputing analytics data (well to some extent). See what works from a conversion angle rather than subjective views .

Hope this helps

Dear Francine,

Nowhere on your main page do you tell people
what to do. That's not good.

Despite any thinking that says we are all individuals,
we love being told what to do: it makes life easier and
it relieves us of the complex responsibility of having to make a choice. It's for this reason that we need signs, signs that tell us: To arrive at X, go through A and B and turn left at C.

With me? (If you're not, carry on reading) [NOTE: I've just given you a sign —a command as to what to do next].

Where was I? Oh yes. Signs.

When we are relieved of the burden of having to make choices, we're less likely to get lost, and in marketing, lost consumers make bad choices.

That's what marketing is all about, helping people to make GREAT choices in order to bring about a desired result (for consumer AND marketer).

When you give people clear instructions that connect to memories or presumptions that they can identify with:

"If you're an XYZ, click here for information about your ABC",

... you telegraph information to the cerebrum (or cortex), the main stage (and the largest part of the brain) that tells each of us the essential stuff we need to know in order to think and take action.

The four lobes of the cortex help us build our mental picture of the world as it is, as we remember it, and as we want it to be.

In the frontal lobe we reason, plan, talk, move, emote, and solve problems. In the parietal lobe we move, orientate, recognize, and perceive. In the occipital lobe we process visual information (real and imagined), and in the temporal lobe we perceive and recognize auditory stimuli (like speech and music), and it's also where we store (and build) memories.

Get your instructions (and your marketing) talking to each of these parts of the brain in dynamic and intriguing ways and suddenly, whole new worlds of imagined possibilities leap around the color screen of our imaginations in glorious, eye-popping color and in mind boggling surround sound.

But here's the thing: those signs must connect with a desired point of destination.

The following few words have no points of connection—they are nonsense (see: jghdh ldjdhsjks otughjsks fjg ididid idididikskslsl jfj lw?). So when you read them your brain has NOTHING to connect them to so it ignores the input.

But when you read "As the burning deck lurched beneath his feet, and the ship began to break apart on the rocks Captain Jack Sparrow knew his only choice was to leap overboard into the night and let the tide carry him toward the island and the lost treasure" ... you are right there on the deck of the pirate ship, in the dark, as the ship breaks apart on the rocks, even though you're safe and snug in your PJs at home. Your mind makes the words into data it can interpret: the words create instructions that provide you with frames of reference ... references on which you can then take action (which, in the case of a novel, usually means you turn the page TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

That's the key: give signs so that people can find out what happens next. Make those signs as clear as possible and connect them to a desired action, and you'll create buy-in. Without buy-in your message won't work, and it's for this reason that most marketing fails.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Princeton, NJ, USA