I reviewed two sites this week that were recently redesigned. Arizona State University took advantage of as much screen real estate as possible. They didn’t implement a typical top horizontal navigation but instead used an audience list on the left and a large expanded list at the bottom of the page. This would seem to get people to scroll past, news, announcements and events every time to get to basic information. This could get annoying after a while but it’s a good way to get visitors paying attention to important items.

The second site was New River Community College. New River had a pretty interesting way of presenting degrees and certificates by loading it right on the page the visitor is on. This is nice because it is quick but the layout of the options leaves much to be desired. In addition the main menu is audience based, most of the links at replicated between all of the audiences and often feels overwhelming. They did a really good job with consistency of elements but I feel like they need to move from the default drop shadows and use something a little more subtle .

If you’re interested in having your university (or one of your competitors) reviewed publicly or privately feel free to submit your site. Over half of the sites reviewed on EDU Checkup are by request.

This Week’s Reviews

Site	Visual	Information	Code	Overall
New River Community College – Episode #186	86	72	77	(235/300) 78% C+
Arizona State University – Episode #185	90	84	86	(260/300) 86% B

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 Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 10:16 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.