The new Business School website was launched earlier this year. It’s the first of the University’s College sites to move to responsive templates which are optimised for viewing across a number of platforms including mobile and tablets. The website launch date was timed to support the Business School’s submission for EQUIS re-accreditation and includes new information about the Business School’s interdisciplinary research clusters as well as additional careers and employability info.

EQUIS is the European quality improvement system for Business Schools, its accreditation is one of the most prestigious accolades that can be bestowed upon an institute for Business and Management education. The EQUIS peer review visit was conducted at the end of September, initial feedback from the review team was very positive, but the official result of the inspection will not be revealed until December.

The website showcases the 5 new Business School research clusters which consist of world-renowned academics, research students and distinguished international visitors. The research clusters include expertise from all specialisations across the Business School. The clusters are:

• Behaviour, Identity and Decisions
• Firms, Markets and Value
• Organisations in Transition
• Business, Institutions and Policy
• Sustainability & Circular Economy

Careers and employability is a high priority for the Business School, the new website also contains additional information for students and potential employers. The Business School was proud to be ranked #1 in the UK for Business and Management graduate employability in 2015 (DHLE).

The website has received positive feedback from the different user groups. Work is ongoing to add additional information and functionality. The next college website to move to responsive templates will be the Medical School, with other colleges to follow.

Paul Collins (Web Marketing Officer for The Business School)

On Wednesday 28^th September 2016 we ran our first ‘Day in the Life’ social media event.

Using the hashtag #LoveExeter, we encouraged staff, students and Alumni from across all our campuses to come together to share their day and give an insight into how the University works, what our community is like, and what it’s like to be a student or member of staff here.

We wanted to celebrate the many facets of the University and show a side that most people don’t get to see. By using social media we saw an organic and revealing celebration of all that the University does without it being over-produced.

User generated content was key and so we encompassed many social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. This allowed contributions from everyone – staff and students – using whichever medium they felt most comfortable with. We welcomed video clips and photos telling us about their day. The Digital Team were out and about on campus capturing content throughout the day with help from colleagues in CaMs.

The content forms part of our Diamond Jubilee Digital Archive. The feed that was created has been brought together on the Diamond Jubilee social wall.

Our overall winning posts for the day were:

• Overall – Adam Porter
• Twitter – Lewis McKenny
• Instagram – Olivia Bell
• Facebook – Harriet Ashworth 

The event was a huge success with over 6.6 million timeline deliveries on Twitter and the hashtag #LoveExeter was trending in the UK for around two hours.

On Instagram we received close to 200,000 impressions and reached almost 40,000 on Facebook.

As Social Media Manager, I am always able to offer advice and guidance if required. You can email me on . You may also wish to take a look at the University’s social media guidance and policy.

Charley Sweet (Social Media Manager)

In this blog post we have used the recent redesign of the New Students website as a case study, to demonstrate some of the considerations and processes involved in redesigning a part of the University website.

Map what we have

Before initiating the redesign we created a site map in order to get a feel for the site and how its pages related to each other.

We then conducted a complete content review with the help of Google Analytics, which showed us how many views each page received and when, as well as average times spent on pages and the device they were viewed on. The aim was to streamline the content for a responsive site and get rid of any dated or unnecessary content.

The site before our redesign.

Plan the project

We set objectives for the site, and established a set of user tasks – the things a user will come to the website to accomplish.

• Example objective: To help students know who to contact if they have a problem, so less time is spent redirecting queries.
• Example user task: “As a new student, I want to know what I need to do before freshers’ week starts, so I am prepared to start university.”

We also created some personas – imagined examples (based on focus group findings) of realistic students who might use the site, and the kinds of concerns and priorities they have. This informed the way we wrote new content and put the site together.

Our personas.

Content first

For the New Students site, we decided to concentrate on drafting all of the content before we thought about how it would look on the site. We used a card-sorting technique to group different pieces of information together in a way that would make the most sense to someone looking at the site for the first time.

Once we had all the content ready, we were able to think about how to position it on the page and how the different pages in the site should relate to one another.

The home page was the last part of the site to be designed, and changed a lot from our initial ideas thanks to feedback from user testing.

User focus

With all of our sites, the primary focus is on who is going to be using the site and what they will use it for. We gathered this information through a mixture of analytics and talking to users in interviews and focus groups, and used our findings to create user stories.

When we had drafted a version of the site, we undertook usability testing: one-to-one sessions in which we observed a student navigating around the site, to see whether it worked in the way they expected, and tested how easy it was for them to accomplish the user tasks.

Some of the key changes we made after user testing were:

• Reducing the amount of information on the home page.
• Making Freshers’ Week information more prominent on the home page.
• Removing an ‘International students’ feature box from the home page, as information throughout the site applies to international students, so this was seen as confusing.
• Adding links between pages: for example, students can now click an in-page link button in the ‘When you Arrive’ page that takes them straight to Freshers’ Week information.

Results

As well as meeting our objectives, the final product has helped the user complete the primary tasks of the site more efficiently and with less effort. We will continue to check that the site is working with more testing, asking for feedback and by regularly reviewing the analytics.

Visit the New Students site

The new responsive site, as it appears on a desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile screen.

Frank Zirger and Lucy Corley
Web and Digital Communications Assistants (GBP)

There are some T4 issues that frequently pop up. Below we’ve listed 4 common conundrums and their solutions. If you have encountered other quirks while using T4, please get in touch and let us know.

1. Is the text on your page formatting incorrectly or looking odd?

This is an example we created on the Career Zone.

To fix this and get your text formatting correctly, you need to view the text in T4, then:

• cut the faulty text so that it’s saved to your clipboard (highlight it, then press Ctrl and X on the keyboard),
• click the ‘Paste as plain text icon’ in the text editor toolbar (highlighted below),
• and paste it back in (press Ctrl and V).
• Then you can highlight the text and re-format it how you want it using the ‘Format’ drop-down menu.

2. Have you made changes to your page in T4 but they’re not taking effect on the live site?

This could be because of a few different causes:

• T4 hasn’t yet finished publishing the page.  This should resolve itself after an hour or so – if you’ve waited and it still isn’t appearing check the options below.
• You clicked ‘update’ rather than ‘update and approve’ which would leave the content ‘pending’ and not ‘approved’ and therefore not added to the publish list. To remedy this make sure you click ‘update and approve.’
• Your internet browser cache has stored an older version of your page so that it is able to load it faster. To update it to the current version you must refresh your page by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the F5 key.
• If you still can’t get your page to update, please contact your web marketing officer or a member of the web team.

3. Do you ever find that your content in T4 bounces up and down? 

This glitch is simple to fix: click the arrow buttons to make the site structure on the left-hand side wider or narrower. Giving the right-hand content more (or less) space will usually solve the problem and make your content readable again.

If you click the left-hand arrow a couple of times, the site structure will disappear from the screen, but it’s easy to retrieve – just click the right-hand arrow to expand it again.

If this fix isn’t working, you can also try re-sizing your browser window.

4. Are your images missing from the media library?

Occasionally a media library folder fails to display any media items when you open it. If you know there should be images or files in there, re-size your browser window. Changing the size of the window usually solves this T4 quirk and makes the items display again.

Frank Zirger and Lucy Corley
Web and Digital Communications Assistants (GBP)

When working on or managing a site on a frequent basis, it is easy to forget that you are not the core user, and that the way you interact with it will probably be completely different to that of someone who has never seen it before. It is important to take a step back and get perspective from someone not familiar with the site to make certain that those who will actually be using it are able to, and at the forefront of its design.

What is usability testing?

Usability testing consists of short sessions whereby a web user, who is preferably of the intended audience of the site being tested, is set a number of simple tasks to complete. Whilst completing these tasks the user is encouraged to ‘think out loud’ before and during any interaction with the site. With permission these sessions can be recorded and then analysed further for useful feedback.

By undertaking this testing early, faults and flaws of all manners can be corrected before they become significant and difficult to fix later in the design process. The results are often surprising and always beneficial in improving the overall experience for our users.

Here are just a few of the valuable improvements you can gain from usability testing

1. Aesthetic improvements – Getting independent feedback from real users who can offer their approval or suggestions on the look of a site is a really useful tool in evaluating it’s aesthetic design.

2. Improved navigation – By observing how users navigate around a site, we can make informed and considerate decisions about where we place navigation elements, what we name them, and also make note of any navigational issues that become apparent.

3. Improved content – Is the text easy to read and appropriate? Are the images adding to the content? Is the content well-structured in a hierarchical manner? Additional suggestions such as videos or social media feeds? – These are all useful questions in appraising and improving the content.

4. Technical glitches – Technical bugs that may have been missed can show up and be noted when a user interacts with a site in an unexpected way.

5. User tasks – By setting key user tasks for the site and asking the subject to complete these, we can know for certain that the site is functioning as it’s supposed to and meeting the needs of its audience.

If you think usability testing could be beneficial for your site, please contact your web marketing officer or someone on the web team.

Frank Zirger
Web and Digital Communications Assistant (GBP)

Recently colleagues and I attended a digital marketing conference in Exeter provided by Optix Solutions, local digital marketing agency. Optix gave a review of digital marketing trends from 2015, forecast trends for 2016 and offered tips on how to improve your digital marketing.

These are our 5 top take-away tips from the event:

1. Think strategically first, then tactically.

Have a digital marketing strategy that encapsulates your aims, objectives, what you want to achieve, who your target audience are and what they want from you before you start to think about the tactics needed to meet your strategic objectives.

If you dive straight in and start with tactics you could find you are wasting a lot of time and using tools and platforms that are not appropriate for your target audience.

2. Focus on your own space

Digital marketing must start with focussing on your own website. It’s vital to position yourself online with a strong, professional website – it’s the online shop window to your organisation.

The key to creating a great website is to create the best possible experience for your audience. Visitors should easily find information, answer their questions or carry out tasks that they need to. A positive experience of your website also lends credibility to the organisation.

Tool tip: www.heatmap.me Generate heat maps to show where your visitors’ mouse hovers over, how far they scroll and where they click. This can give you an insight into what your visitors are looking for and the usability of your site.

3. Take video seriously

YouTube continues to offer an enormous opportunity for organisations. ‘Millenials’ – the demographic born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s – turn to YouTube before Google, offering an opportunity to target a whole generation.

Facebook’s video platform is also expected to rocket in 2016.

4. Be human

Have meaningful engagements and communicate authentically – remember there is a person on the other end of your digital platform! Being seen as ‘human’ helps you be transparent, approachable and trustworthy.

Create interesting, positive and relevant content that your visitors’ understand and can relate to, to build human relationships in a digital world.

5. Google is still huge

Google still drives more traffic than any other channel and is the most used search engine in the market. However Bing is now starting to see an increase in traffic due to its search being used in Microsoft Cortana and Apple’s ‘Siri’ assistant.

As such voice searches are starting to become more widely used, so when considering your SEO widen your net of key phrases to consider what questions somebody might ask when searching by voice.

Top SEO tips from the conference include:

1. Visit www.answerthepublic.com to find out what questions people are asking about your topic, and integrate this into your SEO.
2. Regularly review your content for key phrases and words. Offer quality content that is relevant to your audience.
3. Interact with other people in your community to encourage online conversations or linking to you.
4. Review your site structure and URLs to ensure your site is easy to navigate.

If you would like to discuss your digital presence please contact a member of the Web Team.

Rachel Dennis
Web Marketing Officer

Firstly, ask yourself whether a blog is the right medium for the message you want to convey. If you have information-based content that will remain static over time, that users need to be able to access repeatedly, it is likely to sit better on a static webpage.

But, for content that will become out-of-date, information that is ‘nice to have’ as an addition to the essentials, or ‘opinion and insight’ – a blog could be the perfect way to showcase this. We can help colleagues from across the university get started with blogging on the http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/ domain. The Library News blog and The Exeter Blog are two examples from the University of Exeter where blogs are being used successfully to supplement pages on the main website.

If you think a blog might be right for your content, the first thing to do is have a chat with a member of the web team. They will be able to talk further about whether blogging is appropriate for your area, and may know of existing blogs that you could contribute to, rather than setting up a whole new one.

Whether you find another blog to contribute to, or set up a new one from scratch, the following tips will help.

Five top tips for blogging

1. Keep it simple & not too long

300-500 words is a good rule of thumb

2. Keep it up

You don’t have to blog every day or every week – don’t bombard people with posts if there’s nothing to say – but your readers will appreciate timely updates when you do

3. Be personal and friendly (engage)

A blog’s a good opportunity to show a bit of your personality in your writing – it’s written ‘from a person’ rather than ‘from the department’

4. Remember the difference between a blog and a web page

Link up the two where appropriate – use hyperlinks within blog posts (remember: these are best for opinion and insight) to link through to your web pages (static information.) Maybe you’ve got a new webpage you could talk a bit more about the process behind? Or perhaps a blog would work as a way to deliver updates on an ongoing project which also has a static web presence?

5. Engage with your audience

If you get comments and emails from your readers – respond. Your blog is an opportunity to speak to your users in a more informal tone, so make the most of this.

Further reading from the web team blog

Images

• Sourcing images and copyright
• Choosing appropriate images

Copy

• Writing for the web
• The basics of SEO
• Main principles of web accessibility