Poden els webs universitaris servir a molts d’amos a la vegada?

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Fa pocs dies en aquest blog vaig recollir un dibuix divertit que satiritza els webs universitaris, senyalant la diferència entre el que ofereixen i el que els seus visitants n’esperen. Ara a l’Inside Higher Education també se’n parla al post Web Re(design), ja que sembla que la reacció dels webmasters universitaris al còmic esmentat ha estat força forta. En aquest post, l’IHE diu que

website design is often left in the hands of administrative committees rather than marketing executives who recognize that it is the customer — not the dean, not the provost, not the president — that is always right.

També l’IHE diu que

Of course, part of the dilemma for colleges is that prospective students are not their only audience — though some argue they are the most strategically important. Faculty, staff, current students, alumni and job-seekers also account for a good chunk of traffic to a college’s website. Trouble is, trying to be everything for everyone results in cluttered pages that are more likely to turn off all demographics, experts say. Meanwhile, focusing on one type of visitor while keeping content economical might leave other audiences feeling shortchanged

Alguns webs no permeten vincles a la pàgina principal que tinguin pocs clicks, i d’altres miren des de quina IP s’accedeix al web, o en fan de diferents segons el tipus de visitant 8que ell mateix s’hi declara). I encara d’altres s’han googlelistzat, migrant el seu web cap a un sistema basat en cerques (complexes perquè les unjivesritats són una gran font d’activitat i de documentació):

Some institutions have tried attacking this challenge in creative ways: Ashland University, for example, uses visitors’ IP addresses to figure out whether a guest is accessing the site from on campus or not, says Geyer. If the visitor is not on campus, she is automatically redirected to the prospective students’ portal; if not, she is sent to the current students’ portal.

Others have suggested the possibility of colleges orienting their websites to search, rather than navigation. Michael Stoner, president of the higher ed consulting firm mStoner, made a pitch for Google-like simplicity on college websites in a 2006 blog post.

Un dels comentaris és força rellevant: Serving too many masters

While the cartoon exaggerates the content overkill many universities and colleges put on their home page, it does bring up an excellent point: that schools are trying to serve too many constituents at once. What the current student, prospective student, faculty member, media member, or visitor want to see on that homepage is very different. It’s a challenge we’ve faced with many of our education clients. While there is no one solution for every school, we’ve found that offering a visitor profile button on the homepage (which by the way should contain essential and useful information, instead of bells and whistles) which allows the user to identify themselves as “student”, “media member”, :”faculty”, “applicant”, etc. works well. The user is than whisked away to a customized homepage, chock full of information that their demographic group wants to see and devoid of content they don’t need. Reporters and journalists don’t have to wade through applicant information, students aren’t barraged with press releases and faculty bios., visitors to the campus don’t have to hunt around for a school map, and everyone is happy.

Les universitats són molt grans pel que fa a informació i a documentació, i potser voler “servir tots els amos a la vegada” (o “tocar tots els pitos”) no és possible. Però sembla que oferir diferents entorns segons el tipus de visitant és una bona idea (i de passada permet resoldre el tema de llengua en el cas nostre).

Es tracta d’un article interessant que mereix una reflexió.

Imatge: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3400/3298560175_bfb5d5f527.jpg