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- The design is 'tired'.
- The design needs to be simpler.
- The aesthetics and user experience aren't good or attractive.
- Needs to be more current, engaging and simple.
Content
- There's too much content. Pages can get buried and forgotten about. Maintaining the sites is time consuming. It's difficult to keep time-sensitive information current. Content maintenance is a big issue: we've found spelling mistakes that weren't picked up, links that don't go anywhere.
- Pages are too wordy. They need to be much simpler. They need to be more visual and use current technology - such as more video and podcasts.
- Lack of time and resources for web content. Need more content writing resource.
- Content management works best when it's led by one person.
- If you're not going to use Squiz often, it's hard to use.
- Regular content planning meetings work well for web and social media, especially when there's input and engagement from academic staff.
IA
It's hard to find things. You go looking for something and you can't find it. Need to be able to find information faster.
Staff profiles
- Maintaining staff profiles is a pain.
- The staff directory is a problem - people don't know how to fix it and don't know that they are supposed to keep it up to date.
Channels
- We've got too many channels of information. Students are missing information even though they are being told it in a million different ways. They don't know which place they should go to.
- It would be good to have linkages to official social media channels.
- Some of our social media channels aren't well managed.
Analytics
- Faculties and schools want to see analytics, including data about conversions.
Search
- The site search doesn't give useful results.
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- Who to contact
- Staff profiles
- Subjects, programmes and courses - undergrad and postgrad
- Scholarships and awards and exchanges
- News
- Events
- Student profiles - eg, research students
- Accessing centres and institutes.
User sessions
Victoria students
In July 2015 the WIP2 web project team held sessions with six current Victoria students from a range of study areas. Five were undergraduate and one was postgraduate.
- All the students had very low engagement with the 'Vic website' (a term they used to include F&S sites). These students reported that they use the 'Vic website' to meet a very narrow range of needs: find a person, get course info or access a shortcut to a tool (via the header menu). One student indicated that he also uses the Vic website to access information on dates, grades, timetables and similar - this content is in 'Current students'.
- When accessing staff profiles, students used search and therefore didn't visit the home page of the faculty or school site where the profile was located. They thus missed news, events and other features on the home page.
- The students identified email and BlackBoard as their preferred channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook.
- The undergraduate students didn't understand that faculty and school sites existed as separate sites. When we pointed out to one student that she was on a separate school site, she commented: “This should all be one thing – school, faculty and Victoria. And it is all the same thing. We are one university and there is no reason why it can’t all be together."
- The postgraduate student had greater awareness of separate faculty and school sites, but said she only used the school site for staff info - so she could find out the room number for a staff member. Occasionally she might look at pics of staff members "to see who they are"; or might use staff profiles to find out "which Dean to talk to for which thing". She didn't use faculty or school sites, or the Victoria website, for anything else.
- Three students stated that they didn't trust the web content because it might be inaccurate or out of date: they would email or phone someone to check.
Secondary school students
- Search results were sometimes swamped with results from F&S sites, which could be confusing.When
- looking for information about a staff member, students invariably used search and therefore missed the home page of a F&S site.Students weren't sure about the roles of faculties and of schools.
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Victoria University website: where it's going
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