Research Driven Department Web Pages Micayla Blair Associate Director of Web Communications Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

If you take one thing away from this presentation, please let it be this: You do not need to be a developer or have advanced web skills to be capable of making drastic improvements to your website.

What we’ll be talking about: Where are you at now? What resources are available? Communicating results Application

Where are you at now? What does your page look like? How is it currently performing? Google Analytics Accessibility Google Page Speed Insights CMS Insights Quality Assurance Tools How many of you are developers by trade? Communicators? This fell into the other duties as assigned? How many of you are happy with your current site performance? How many of you are thinking about a reorg/redesign process? How many of you are in charge of that? How many are supplementing the process? How many of you use Omni Update? If not, what CMS are you using? Wordpress?

Where are you at now, continued Conduct an Audit Gives you a scope and a budget Beginning for maintenance and removal Serves as a reference throughout your process Quantitative (if you don’t have access, contact your webmaster or IT personnel): Titles/topics/page descriptions URLs Format (text, image, video, etc.) Source Traffic Qualitative Best practices assessment: comparison against industry (preferably done by an unbiased 3rd party) Strategic assessment: how your content measures up to business goals. How many of you have done a site audit before? What was that like? Were you able to find the value in it?

Google Analytics What does your content drilldown look like? Could you guess what your most visited page is? Is that what you want it to be? Can we create funnels to the information your audience is looking for? How many of you have seen a google analytic reports?

You know what you’ve got. What now? This is the time for some usability testing Optimal Workshop: Card Sorting Pathfinding (treejack report) Survey “participants noted that improved navigation would make them more likely to return to the Bumpers website.” This is the chance to get some qualitative data about what your audience needs. What do they prioritize vs. what does administration prioritize? Example: news feeds If you aren’t doing a whole site audit, this is where you can get even more specific about audience expectations for a certain page https://www.optimalworkshop.com/optimalsort/uark/bumperscollegecardsorting/shared-results/x0f2j5hyq5h1k0jdgu4732yc331nfv07#/t/analysisTools/participantCentricAnalysis

Communicating results to stakeholders: This may be one of the most difficult parts. This may be a dean, department head, faculty member, etc. Use the data. Developing your strategy to make improvements: Achieve: what does the content need to accomplish? Be: What content products do you need to produce? How is it valuable to users? Do: What does the client/organization need to do to support the effort? In a higher education setting, the stakeholders are often those who may be most resistant to change, but often are the most vocal about disapproval. We’ve all been there. These are data driven people, so use the data. Do: I am not the subject matter expert in apparel merchandising. I know less than most, probably. So incorporate the subject matter experts when you can. In my experience, they feel some ownership. But this takes strategy. It is often best to come to them with something to critique, as opposed to asking them to create something themselves. Develop templates based on your feedback and go from there.

Page examples Homepage Program page https://human-environmental-sciences.uark.edu/ https://bumperscollege.uark.edu/future-students/apparel-merchandising-product-development.php

Results for bumperscollege.uark.edu: Traffic to undergraduate programs landing page increased 195% (compared to previous year) Traffic to department landing page increased 284% Traffic to graduate programs landing page increased 236% Traffic to scholarships landing page increased 621% https://human-environmental-sciences.uark.edu/ https://bumperscollege.uark.edu/future-students/apparel-merchandising-product-development.php

Resources available: Contact your webmaster Screaming frog Google Analytics Google Page Speed Insights Optimal Workshop Webfirst.uark.edu University Relations webhelp@uark.edu A few things to remember: Results take time Create a strategy Come to stakeholders/SMEs with data Persistency pays off. Even starting with small adjustments can lead to improved performance. Use the resources available to you.

Thank you for your time. Questions?