This week seemed like a flop, Western Illinois University got a “D” and Hope College got an “F-”, but there are some pretty important lessons here. The first is as you can tell from the screen shots above the web changes fast, your users will know in a few seconds how much effort you put into your site. the two sites look like they were designed over five years ago. Interestingly enough Western Illinois looks like it was only launched a year or so ago (from what I can tell).

The second is navigation creep. The navigation for the two sites probably accomplished all the users and institutions needs when they launched. But over time things have been added/moved/removed which deteriorated the effectiveness. The most apparent is the right column of the Western Illinois University site, it is now packed and nothing stands out anymore. Lets take a ride on the Way Back Machine to see how clean the right column was when the site launched. It’s a shame.

This Week’s Reviews

Site	Visual	Information	Code	Overall
Western Illinois University – Episode #130	43	60	90	(193/300) 64% D
Hope College – Episode #131	40	50	22	(112/300) 37% F-

Keep up up with @educheckup on twitter and RSS for more site updated in the coming weeks. Or if you prefer, an iTunes feed is available so you can get new episodes automatically.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 6:42 am and is filed under EDU Checkup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.