In this article we will discuss webdesign guidelines, and how they apply to websites aimed at students. It’s vital that navigation and content are written in a style that facilitates the speed reading and information gathering habits of students.
A Prospectus is not a Website
The differences between print and online media
There are still some colleges and universities out there who invest in an expensive, beautifully laid out prospectus, which they publish online, in lieu of a website. This isn’t useful to existing students, and it’s an awkward format for potential students. PDF documents are rarely as accessible as plain webpages.
But even colleges who do have clean, accessible html websites may fall into the trap of writing for print instead of the web.
The Poynter Institute, a “school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists”, produced a report in 2007 called Eyetracking the News, which revealed that there are marked differences in the way that people read online media and print media.
In print media, the eye tends to go directly to the main headlines. However in online media, the eye gravitates towards the content and the navigation instead.
Images have different values
In the Poynter study, print readers were strongly attracted to images, in particular “large photos and documentary shots”. In contrast, online readers tend to avoid images.
Printed images have a price tag that online images lack. In a newspaper or brochure space is restricted to a set page format. Colour ink may be prohibitively expensive. These restrictions are lessened online; while there is always the cost of bandwidth to be considered, the page itself can stretch to any size. Images can be used with wild abandon.
This may lead to print images being more carefully selected. Only pictures worthy of supporting the story are used, and only wealthy advertisers can afford the luxury of colour. The financial restrictions mean that less gratuitous images are used overall.
Images used online don’t have to work quite as hard to earn their place, so they aren’t trusted as much by the reader. Online articles are often illustrated with only loosely connected images, because there are fewer restrictions financially and spatially. Online images are often advertisements or filler, and people have adjusted to this by ignoring them.
Different reading speeds
People read 25% slower on screen than on paper, yet they try to resist this by scanning through documents quickly, often only absorbing a few words here or there, until they find what they are looking for, and dart from site to site, in a matter of seconds. This behaviour has a profound effect on how people in general and students in particular use websites.
How Students use Websites
Gerry McGovern insightfully explains why writing for the web is different to writing for print, when he describes people as “relentlessly task-focused.” There is a very specific reading behaviour which people adopt when faced with a website; they scan down the left side of the page. This allows them to pick up on bits of headlines, and bits of paragraphs, and they keep scanning until they find what they want. If they can’t find their target information, they quickly leave.
This behaviour is a reaction to our information soaked lives. There is so much to take in, it’s no wonder we each develop coping strategies to deal with it all. However there is one sector of society which is under more pressure from information bombardment than most others: students.
Pity the Leaving Cert students with their cramped little arms and crammed little brains, and the college attendees with their mountains of research and viciously long papers!
Just because they can read, doesn’t mean they want to
Students tend to be highly skilled at filleting articles for information. However, this requires a high level of concentration and effort. The online environment is not the ideal place for quiet, passive information absorption, because there are far too many flickering advertisements and links to click. There is an overload of data, and an overload of choice.
Students adore study guides such as Spark Notes. They also compile their own condensed notes, jotting down only the most important keywords, quotations and vital facts. So the best way to optimise a site for students, is to use a terse, functional style, as efficient and easy to process as a good set of notes.
It’s vital to provide students with a website they can speed read, because even if you don’t, they’ll speedread it anyway.
Student-friendly Sites Need:
- Logical site structure
- Divide site information into logical sections. Tidy, organized information is always easier to digest. For best results, combine this with short, descriptive navigation links, and everyone will be able to get the information they need with minimum effort.
- Search box
- Allowing users to search directly for what they want lets them bypass the navigation of a site, and get to the information even more quickly. If a student is looking for a very specific term, this will be his or her shortest route.
- Descriptive headings
- The left edge of the page gets more attention than any other area, because we read from left to right. It is possible to give speed reading students an easier time by making sure that the first two words are keywords.
- Descriptive links also important
- “Click here” tells a reader nothing about the link and adds extra unnecessary words to a page. Use appropriate text for links. For example, this article about usability by Sarah Horton discusses link text in more depth.
Guidelines that Student-Targeted Sites can Bend:
Not all usability guidelines are suitable for every site. The following guidelines need special consideration for student targeted sites.
- The logo and tagline on every page
- Jakob Nielsen Recommends that websites have a tagline on every page of their site, describing in one or two lines what the site is about. This is useful advice for most business sites, but isn’t as critical for university or college sites. Current students are (hopefully) already aware of the outlook and purpose of the college site, but it may be beneficial for new potential students.
- Write for a young reading age
- The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 recommend that documents are kept “clear and simple”. Many websites achieve this by aiming for a twelve year old reading age, in order to be accessible to young users, adults with literacy deficits, and users whose first language differs from the website’s language. However, a site specifically for students may have technical terms and complex arguments, which can’t be expressed in simplistic terms.
- Keep the word count per page low
- This isn’t relevant on a site targeting students, because engaging articles, research and reports will be read deeply by students, once they find one they require. By their very nature, these kinds of documents are usually long and in depth, so it is ok to have more words on these kinds of pages, than on a regular website.
Tags: information architecture, print v web, students, usability