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EMAILLet’s talk a little bit about expectations of an admission website, and the evolving nature of it. I’m going to speak in terms of the Whole Product Concept, which some of you might be familiar with. It looks like this:
No, i’m not trying to sell you a product. I’m trying to sell you on usability testing. That’s right, with only $10 and 10 minutes YOU can IMPROVE your SITE! (insert big logo and web 2.0 graphic here)
Last November I did a usability test with Marcie, a senior at a local high school. There was one question I wanted to ask her because I was pretty sure I knew the answer already, I just needed it recorded for proof to others. 
Sorry for 2 posts so soon, but I noticed that the new site just launched. The OLD (seriously, like 6 years old) www.butler.edu site has been transformed to the NEW. We still have a ways to go (some 2nd level, 3rd level, etc. pages not updated), but it looks great so far. What a welcome change and a fresh look.
Huge thanks to everyone who had a hand in the project! It looks much better.
Also, I’m glad my Bloggers made front page Finally, some more traffic!
Old and Busted (Click to Enlarge)
New and Hotness (Click to Enlarge) (or… just check it out.)
Ever been in a meeting with a manager that is completely unqualified to make a critical decision about some piece of technology or strategy? Let’s say you have a website, and you are rolling out a new feature. Now you have been the model web developer; you’ve done case studies, use-ability testing, research, etc. You know what a user wants, and what they most definitely do not want.
Your manager has now identified something that they HAVE to have on the website. Ironically, your target audience also identified that this very thing they are talking about is a bad idea and they do not like it. Now what? First of all, breath deep and find your happy place. In many cases this is where web developers (and certainly education industry professionals) flip their lid. No, the manager in question isn’t qualified to speak about web design, and no they have absolutely no experience in usability - but they call the shots. Don’t fret, you still have options.
Ask why they want feature X. This might be a mis-communication. If “the manager” is a board member, have someone who feels comfortable enough call them up and have a candid conversation on why this feature has to make it into the final roll out. It may be a simple communication issue - the manager said “I’d like for it to be on the site” and someone heard “IT MUST BE ON THE SITE OR SURELY WE WILL BE IN RUIN.”
…but they still want it.
Ok, this is where we dig in. First of all, did you summarize your use-ability tests, your research, your interviews, etc. into a readable and clear document? If not, get to work. If you did - go over it again. Do you have charts and graphs? Can you easily see what the users want, what people have experienced in the past as successful implementations? Make certain you can. Don’t frame your data, don’t skew it to make it look good- just make sure the results are clear.
Here’s the part that might make you squirm: They might be right. After looking at your data, and seeing what people want and have been successful with- you might have made his or her case. This is where you get to bring them the report and shower them with praise.
WAKE UP. No daydreaming.
You have your data and it’s clearly pointing to the fact that feature X is a bad idea. Present this to your manager and request a follow up meeting to talk about it. Bring your raw data and be prepared for all sorts of questions. Make your case and request we do not include feature X.
Ok. They still say no. DO NOT head to http://www.monster.com just yet.
Compromise. They obviously want this feature and don’t care that it’s bad for your website. Is there a way you can implement feature X to limit it’s exposure? Could you possibly negotiate to get feature Y (the one you were going to ask for next week) into the site? Find a way to soften the blow to meet the needs of your target audience.
The ideal setting would have people who call the shots deferring to “experts” in the respective fields who know more about subject X than they do. This always isn’t the case, so more than likely you’re going to deal with this situation in one way or another. Remember that you are setting a precedent in how you react to your manager. If it turns into a painful experience for both of you, you might not get the chance to be heard the next time. Keep your head up, do your homework and live to fight another day.
We have a ‘unique campus’ at Butler, i.e. we are in the middle of a neighborhood and there is a lack of accomodations in the immediate area. Visitors have a hard time conceptualizing where they need to go for hotels, restaurants, etc. I’ve been pushing for Google Maps API implementation for awhile, but to no avail.
With Scholar’s Forum coming quickly (where admitted students interview for scholarships, etc), we have been getting the page up for our admitted students who will be visiting. Rather than continue to try to get the API implemented (we use a home-grown CMS that doesn’t exactly allow me to get into the code…), I went ahead and designed the Google Maps and just used their iframe embedding function. After some tweaks to the code (Art figured out that a mere < 15 pixels was pushing the maps to the bottom of the page in IE6/7, but not Firefox), we are up and running.
This makes it easy for visitors to see where we are, where hotels and resturants are, and allows them to punch in their address for directions as well. On the Hotel side of things, I added links to read reviews on each hotel, which I thought might be helpful. I also included phone #’s to be on the safe side. Since the information was already compiled, it was pretty easy to copy/paste most of the information over after I geotagged on the map.
Here’s the page: Go.Butler.Edu < Scholars Forum < Accomodations.
You can use Google Maps for other things as well in your office. For example, yesterday I had an admission counselor email me with a request to highlight Lake Road on this PDF map (just try finding it) so visiting counselors would know where to park for an upcoming conference. Instead, I created another Google Map highlighting where they should park, where the building they are going to is, and a pinpoint that opens immediately giving them the option to plug in their address for directions. Then I gave him a tinyurl for the email, and the request was done.
Tell me what you think! What are you using Google Maps for on your campus?
I’ve been tracking a recent stat in Analytics that keeps popping it’s ugly head up, so I had to do some research. Here’s the deal. Our admission site is http://go.butler.edu, not http://www.go.butler.edu. Regardless, a lot of end users still feel the need to put a www at the beginning of absolutely everything.
Not a problem, right? Wrong. Looking at the top 2 browsers, people use, 1 of 2 things would happen to them:
1) Internet Explorer — The bad url would direct to a Microsoft search engine that showed http://go.butler.edu as the top result. The user would then click that link, which would report in Analytics that they came to the site via search engine with the string ‘www.go.butler.edu’. Turns out, it was our second most popular search link last month with 101 people doing this.
2) Firefox -Nothing. ‘Server not found’ error would display. User ends up thinking site is down, or worse… “Well, there must not be a site here.”
So let’s look at the numbers.
So if 101 users using IE did this, we can extrapolate the number of browser users to say that approximately 21 Firefox users did this as well (on the other hand, we could also say Firefox users are more tech saavy and would do this less, but let’s just keep it simple.) Using the math that 101/130 = 77.69%, if there were 130 people to search www.go.butler.edu, 101 of them would be the IE users, and .1646*130 = 21.4 users, with the remaining 8 users using Safari/other browsers.
SO. Here we are with 21 users a month (252 a year) who for sure aren’t getting to the site, and another 1,212 that are having to go the extra step to get to the site, assuming they even want to do that. That brings us to 1,464 potential website viewers who are just not getting straight to the message.
Luckily, this ended up being an easy fix. We told IT our problem/suggested solution, and they emailed me back within a week saying that http://www.go.butler.edu would now redirect to http://go.butler.edu. And we will now have 1,500 more visitors who get straight to the site every year. Hooray!
So we’re hitting usability pretty hard this week. Hard as in basically taking up my entire week. Very enlightening stuff. Best $150 we’ve ever spent. I’ll be compiling some general observations to share with you later next week. I’ll have a Higher Ed How-To: Usability Testing coming soon, which is the name of a new section that I am starting. It will consist of basic How-To’s, such as how to get started with usability testing, bloggers, Google Maps, Adwords, Analytics, Facebook/MySpace/etc., Wikipedia, Technorati, and more, using examples from what I have done and seen. Looking forward to getting that started.
In the mean time, it looks like I have another session to get to.
