Pg. 16 Exercise 1 analysis
Looking at the NIU website, the goal of it would be to attract people to enroll as students at the university. NIU is a university that wants more students to enroll to keep the university open and growing. Some ways that the NIU administration would try to enable this would to be a very simple and easy to use website that shows how great of a university it is and essentially sell itself. Nowadays, many people's first impression of a university or college can be made from their website which a person can continue their college search into scheduling school visits and finding specific information about the institution so having a great website that show cases all the great possibilities and opportunities that NIU has to offer is in NIU's best interests. Therefore, making it feel appealing and easy to navigate to the desired information is also in NIU's interest to attract people. Clarity, accessibility, and professional appearance should top the goals in NIU making a successful website for itself.
Clarity: Since this is a university website, the main concerns of the website should be geared towards allowing people to access things such as admitting applications, what type of academics it offers, whats the costs are looking like, and now more than ever financial aid. It should clearly show where to get to these and other vital pieces of information when it concerns a person enrolling at NIU.
Just looking at the homepage it shows right where all these pieces of information can be retrieved from. Scrolling through the page a person can see various pictures of the university with buttons labeled all over leading to things like how to schedule a visit or how to transfer from another school. Clicking on any of these brings you to pages with pictures and plenty of white space with fragments of text that get to the point, are very easy to read and understand at first glance, and finally gives information on where to seek out more information about the topic if the page doesn't answer all the questions a person might have. Therefore, I think the NIU website does a good job at being clear to its visitors and providing ways to seek out more information if the user wants it.
Accessibility: Besides making the information clear, having an easy to use website that can be accessed and understood by various types of people is another important goal to consider for NIU. Having a website that isn't intuitive and "clunky" in nature could prevent people from choosing the university because the impression of, "they might not know what they're doing so I'm going to look at this school instead because I can't even find how to submit an application to admissions on this school's website."
The NIU website does a fairly good job of being accessible. From the homepage, the top right buttons include, Academics, Admissions, Tuition and Aid, Life at NIU, Research, Locations. Which appear to be some of the most important topics a new aspiring student would want to learn more about before considering NIU. Therefore, it makes sense that those tabs are one of the first things that can be seen on the website and that the tabs include almost every web page that relates to the topic of the tab. Another thing that could be over looked is the search bar at the very top right that can be utilized to search key words to anything a person might need to find more information about. Scrolling down the page, the website has buttons that bring you to pages that make it easy for a person to apply and even schedule a visit.
Professional Appearance: In NIU's case a professional appearance for any university is necessary so people can see that the university is serious about what they do and that is education. What's the point of going to an institution that seems like they don't care about the service they give? Therefore it's necessary to seem professional but appealing in appearance to attract people to the university.
NIU's website does a good job about this because of the other 2 goals in crafting their website. A university worth their stars would try to nail Clarity and Accessibility to seem professional in nature. If a school's website is hard to navigate and find information then after finding that information it's just an unreadable block of text then it doesn't seem that professional in nature because it seems like the university doesn't care about bringing in new students and that can translate to maybe not caring about its academics. By structuring a good website that show cases the necessary information in an easy to use and reasonable format, NIU succeeds in making a neat and professional appearance.
Clarity: Since this is a university website, the main concerns of the website should be geared towards allowing people to access things such as admitting applications, what type of academics it offers, whats the costs are looking like, and now more than ever financial aid. It should clearly show where to get to these and other vital pieces of information when it concerns a person enrolling at NIU.
Just looking at the homepage it shows right where all these pieces of information can be retrieved from. Scrolling through the page a person can see various pictures of the university with buttons labeled all over leading to things like how to schedule a visit or how to transfer from another school. Clicking on any of these brings you to pages with pictures and plenty of white space with fragments of text that get to the point, are very easy to read and understand at first glance, and finally gives information on where to seek out more information about the topic if the page doesn't answer all the questions a person might have. Therefore, I think the NIU website does a good job at being clear to its visitors and providing ways to seek out more information if the user wants it.
Accessibility: Besides making the information clear, having an easy to use website that can be accessed and understood by various types of people is another important goal to consider for NIU. Having a website that isn't intuitive and "clunky" in nature could prevent people from choosing the university because the impression of, "they might not know what they're doing so I'm going to look at this school instead because I can't even find how to submit an application to admissions on this school's website."
The NIU website does a fairly good job of being accessible. From the homepage, the top right buttons include, Academics, Admissions, Tuition and Aid, Life at NIU, Research, Locations. Which appear to be some of the most important topics a new aspiring student would want to learn more about before considering NIU. Therefore, it makes sense that those tabs are one of the first things that can be seen on the website and that the tabs include almost every web page that relates to the topic of the tab. Another thing that could be over looked is the search bar at the very top right that can be utilized to search key words to anything a person might need to find more information about. Scrolling down the page, the website has buttons that bring you to pages that make it easy for a person to apply and even schedule a visit.
Professional Appearance: In NIU's case a professional appearance for any university is necessary so people can see that the university is serious about what they do and that is education. What's the point of going to an institution that seems like they don't care about the service they give? Therefore it's necessary to seem professional but appealing in appearance to attract people to the university.
NIU's website does a good job about this because of the other 2 goals in crafting their website. A university worth their stars would try to nail Clarity and Accessibility to seem professional in nature. If a school's website is hard to navigate and find information then after finding that information it's just an unreadable block of text then it doesn't seem that professional in nature because it seems like the university doesn't care about bringing in new students and that can translate to maybe not caring about its academics. By structuring a good website that show cases the necessary information in an easy to use and reasonable format, NIU succeeds in making a neat and professional appearance.
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