This week both sites reviewed recently launched a redesign, so recent that some of their pages still don’t reflect the new look.

The first site, Columbia University – College of Physicians and Surgeons, started out strong with a clean structured homepage but went down hill quickly. The homepage has four completely different menus in the header all for different audiences. That may make sense to someone who visits the site often but as a first or second time visitor, it forces them to look at and scan all of the menus and each and every menu item to determine where they should go. Beyond the menu it took a bit of time to find the actual degree requirements and unfortunately featured a program outline that was stuck in an image. A really large image that has all the requirements listed out but doesn’t feature alternate text. Someone with a screen reader or searching Google wouldn’t be able to use this information at all.

The second site, Northern Michigan University, featured a lot of images on their homepage, these really caught my attention. This combined with the large amount of text really pulled my eyes left and right as I was looking for the main menu. Once I found it I realized how many items were in it, nine items in a horizontal menu. Interestingly enough they were all readable and scannable which goes to show there isn’t a hard limit to the number of menu items that a site should have. It was also the first institutional homepage I have seen that includes a Web poll. This seems like a flashback to 1999 but I found it fun to vote and see the results. Lastly the search box on NMU’s website is larger than most, I found myself gravitating to it at times as an easy way to find information. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing but it definitely is an opportunity.

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

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.

The two sites this week started off on rocky ground. Baylor University had all the right intentions but they fell flat in every category. Looking for a list of majors kept bringing me to a page that listed each school/college and center. It took some active digging just to figure out what they offer. Once I found their offerings the site style had changed and although they were in a well defined list, that list was in an iframe. Scrolling up and down broke the overall use of the web page and I was finding myself continuously adjusting the page. Lastly, this was one of the very few sites I have seen still using HTML 4. Completely table based layout and absolutely no attention to optimization.

The second site, Stevens-Henager College fared a little better. The site isn’t big at all, clicking through it felt more like a complete marketing site than one for a institution. I was intrigued by the main menu drop downs that expanded on click instead of mouse over. To me this makes sense to work but may be a little overkill if someone is using a desktop browser instead of a tablet. Information was very easy to find and I was able to get to a specific program right away. The one thing that bothered me after finding the program I wanted to apply for was the inability to actually apply online. The only way to take a next step was to request information. This was disappointing because it puts a time delay in to making a decision, in that time I could apply and get accepted to numerous other institutions.

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

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.