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A good development team, really–including design, information architecture, technology and project management expertise–working in coordination with a comprehensive internal process to determine exactly what the site needs to do for whom, with input from all the major campus constituencies, particularly marketing, enrollment and IT. And you have to do it all without unduly scaring the faculty or the top administration.</p>
<p>It’s not a small deal.</p>
<p>You’d think they could at least get a less ugly site scheme, though. <em>cough</em>Dartmouth<em>cough</em></p>
<p>*Cornell College and Hendrix have outdated weblinks *</p>
<p>Bama has one, too. It’s annoying because it goes to a page where the pics have been removed…yeah that’s attractive. LOL The bad thing is when you do a search for this program, this is the first link result, so naturally people will click on that one first.</p>
<p>The redesign was done last fall, so I can understand a slight delay to remove this oddball link, but it’s still there.</p>
<p>Scripps College is a tad difficult to navigate…perhaps they are just all out enjoying the weather</p>
<p>Not ugly or annoying, but I was surprised last year at the different “personalities” of the colleges’ websites, everything from “We’re really super serious, and we take education very seriously, look how serious our website is” to “Hey!! Let’s be BFFs! Our website pwns MySpace!”</p>
<p>^^ But the Scripps site definitely gets bonus points for elegance and beauty in design. It reflects the beauty (and style) of the campus quite well.</p>
<p>I have said it once, and I will say it again - Carnegie Mellon’s website drives me crazy! I can never find what I’m looking for.</p>
<p>I suppose there’s some irony in the fact that they have one of the best computer science departments in the country - I know all too well that that web design has nothing to do with CS, but still…</p>
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<p>Absolutely! I got to see just a microcosm of this when my H reported back some of the angst just in developing his departments portion of the university’s web site. Not a pretty process but ultimately the job was done and the result was reasonable. About what you’d expect of a math dept.</p>
<p>There was a whole thread last year on what every college website should have. I get very frustrated when I can’t find an exact address with a zip code so I could get it loaded into my GPS. Or having to go all over to find a phone number. Crazy.</p>
<p>As a school website developer (my high school) [Fort</a> Myers High School](<a href=“http://fmh.leeschools.net/]Fort”>http://fmh.leeschools.net/) I can tell you that if a school is to have a great website they have to invest in the web development team. To develop mine I hand selected only a few students and we created this one, but I won’t be redoing any foreseeable time in the future because of a lack of time and resources. Anyway, from my perspective, organizations seem to think that the whole process is simple and that anyone who can create a PowerPoint can design a website. (I can tell you that building a comprehensive website is very overwhelming and takes a long time.) To add to this are all of the easy click and build programs that also lead people to believe that it is really easy, but to design something as comprehensive as needed by a university takes a lot more than that. I would not be surprised if many universities have understaffed their web development teams or have poorly selected team managers to make sure it is designed correctly. Just because a kid can build a computer (which is actually a very simple an fun task) doesn’t mean they can build a university website, but if an administrator doesn’t understand anything about computers they will probably not know how to select the correct people to design it.</p>
<p>What do you think of Pretty in Pink?
[Home</a> | Sweet Briar College](<a href=“http://www.sbc.edu/]Home”>http://www.sbc.edu/)</p>
<p>^^^
Ha!!!</p>
<p>Looks like the webpage for a Sweet 16 party.</p>
<p>Wow that Sweet Briar site would be a big turn-off to my daughters. “Think is for girls”?</p>
<p>Oh Emm Gee Doubleyoo Tee Eff Ess Bee Cee…</p>
<p>Well, at least they don’t have to worry whether they’ve differentiated themselves successfully in the market.</p>
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<p>Some of the websites are just plain ugly but the ones that bother me the most are the ones where I have to search high and low for the most basic information - like application deadlines and addresses! Or the ones that have an admissions link on the home page but it then takes you to one ‘marketing’ page after another expounding on what a great school it is before eventually linking you some actual admissions information. Ugh! I never realized there were so many ways to ruin a college website.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd … ugly, inefficient, and broken links. And I said this before they rejected DS in ED.</p>
<p>Interesting…the HMC site looks really good to me, and the navigation seems reasonably transparent, though I’ll admit I didn’t hang around all that long. One of the headaches for web designers is that we don’t all react to the same look & feel the same way.</p>
<p>Just found another example I had forgotten about.
University of Minnesota- Morris makes it very difficult to find e-mail addresses to contact the school. They do provide contact forms, but are slow in answering them. Also, some parts of the website redirect one to pages for all UMin schools, not one specially for Morris.</p>
<p>*Harvey Mudd … ugly, inefficient, and broken links. And I said this before they rejected DS in ED. *</p>
<p>Went to the website…brown like mudd. </p>
<p>[Harvey</a> Mudd College](<a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/]Harvey”>http://www.hmc.edu/)</p>
<p>One of the headaches for web designers is that we don’t all react to the same look & feel the same way</p>
<p>True, but I think many don’t like too much unorganized clutter. Drop down menus are fine, but too much on the page at one time, is too much.</p>