<p>S has an local interview with Grinnell next week. In comparison to other school websites, I am finding a complete lack of info on their website and even their youtube channel. I am shocked. For a school in the middle of Iowa, shouldn't there be videos showing the student body and the campus? There isn't even a tab for student life. And I keep telling S about their self governance policy and thought there would be an explanation about it for prospective students.</p>
<p>S has been designing websites for years. Bad websites make bad impressions to him. Grinnell's is old fashioned and formal. Is that what the school is like?</p>
<p>I think it would be silly to judge a college by its website. Universities are not integrated wholes, there is going to be a ton of internal variation. Moreover, any one aspect can be due to a wide host of factors, right down to one single person who should never have been hired. </p>
<p>There are many reasons why a particular website might have a particular design. It may have nothing to do with the culture. Or even if it is related to the culture, how can you be confident your ‘interpretation’ is correct? So for example, you might see it as ‘old fashioned’ and therefore the school must be too. Someone else might attribute it to “not just copying what everyone else is doing” and therefore think the school might be like that too. Another might see the same design and think, “they care about more important things like the student body”. Who knows!? </p>
<p>But I actually agree with your frustration and I see it with lots of school websites.</p>
<p>I judge businesses by their websites all the time. I have a website for my business and I pay close attention to it because I know that it is the first impression potential clients get and because I want them to find information easily. I do expect a college to have an excellent user-friendly website and it would make a bad impression on me if one didn’t. I find it particularly interesting that the OP’s son designs websites. I can imagine that he would be turned off by a poorly designed site.</p>
<p>Honestly, in the end, there are probably many schools where your kid will thrive. There may be many “legitimate” reasons to nix a school, and clearly there are so many “stupid” reasons why kids reject a school (check out that thread)–weather, tour guide, web site, dorms etc. It is a very arbitrary process. Unless you don’t have any schools that your kid loves, I wouldn’t worry too much about arbitrary rejections. Once you narrow it down, I’d bet that you have a pretty much equal shot that your kid will be happy at schools to which he ultimately applies.</p>
<p>You have a point. Yes as a business owner you should care because obviously some people make that judgment and you don’t want to lose customers. But really is your goal to find a university that is good at getting customers? Or one that provides the right learning and growth environment for your kid? </p>
<p>I’m saying its silly to judge a business on the basis of their website design (not the information within the website per se). Except of course when the core expertise I’m looking for is somehow related to web design abilities. </p>
<p>But if website design is far from the core expertise of the business I’m judging, why would I discount them? If I’m looking for, I dunno, a psychologist or plumber…I care about what they SAY on their website (if anything), but I couldn’t care less about how user friendly or pretty or modern it is (or even if they have one). That is because they may be excellent at therapy or plumbing, but suck at web design. </p>
<p>I think great universities educate and provide a fantastic learning and growing environment for students. Sure it’s in their interest to have a great website…just like its necessary for them to have great brochures and a nice USNWR rank…its good for business. Whether that tells me anything about how well they will educate and grow my student…not so much, if at all. Except it might tell you how much money they spend trying to move up in the rankings (and sure resources are great but you can find better measures of financials in other ways).</p>
<p>One thing that a lot of university web sites lack is reasonably detailed (including by major) post-graduation survey results of their own graduates.</p>
<p>OTOH, the printed material S received from Grinnell was, IMO, very informative and high quality. A lot of the college info. starts to look/sound the same after awhile, but this one stood out, and seemed to convey how Grinnell is different. (Never been to Grinnell, S not interested, didn’t look at their website.)</p>
<p>Starbright, the impression I got from the OP was that she couldn’t find information on the site which is a major problem that has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the site. If a school doesn’t communicate well on their website, where do they communicate well? She mentioned that there was no tab for student life. Even my son’s public high school has a website that has a tab for students. Website design is about more than making a site pretty, it’s about designing a site in such a way that people can easily find the information they are seeking. A pet peeve of mine is when business make it hard to find their contact info on their sites. When I find myself searching for a customer service phone number that is buried somewhere in the site, that business is losing goodwill with me rapidly.</p>
<p>OP here. It isn’t about the aesthetics of the site. We just want the basic information that might interest a prospective student and his mother. Something that would lead us, from the East Coast, to Iowa for a visit. I hear so many great things about the school, but if detailed info isn’t at my fingertips, I’m not going to buy a plane ticket. I do agree that their printed material is beautiful! S isn’t rejecting
Grinnell, mainly because I am sharing with him the great info I have gotten from CC! Thank you for the link, b@r!um. ;)</p>
<p>mimk6, you and I share the same pet peeve - a business not clearly having their contact info on every page. I, too, tend to get very aggravated if a website is not user-friendly. I will move on to a competitor if I can’t can’t easily navigate the page. Now, if it’s the local pizza place or plumber, I am loyal and don’t care what their website is like. I just need the phone number.</p>
<p>Maybe Grinnell is spending its website design money on mailings. They have sent my daughter dozens of mailings, and the same thing happened with my son.</p>
<p>My first was being pushed by her GC toward a school that had, IMO, a lousy website. I couldn’t get over the idea that it could be a quality choice and have such an unattractive site and be so hard to navigate.</p>
<p>Went to visit (she stayed overnight) just to appease the GC- and the school was fabulous in every respect (except the website.) It became her #1 right away and she’s been deliriously happy there. So, I learned something.</p>
<p>They upgraded the site, but it’s still hard to find what I need. I usually google and get right to it. You can check youtube. You can also put “student life” in Grinnell’s main page search box.</p>