University of Glasgow “search” helps potential students exit the home page ASAP
Potential students who visit a university or college home page want to leave that page as quickly as possible and move along to finish the tasks that brought them to the site in the first place. Few people want to linger and gaze at multiple images, news stories, or current event lists.
“Search” helps complete an important top task…
For most students visiting for the first time a top task is learning if a particular university offers the academic program that interests them. And if you already have a particular program in mind, why not just type the name into a search box to get to that content? For those visitors, the more prominent the search spot the better.
If you already know a university has the program that interests you, what better way to get there from the home page than using the search box. If you can find it. At Glasgow, that’s not a problem.
“News” and “Events” as tiny tasks…
University of Glasgow gives greater prominence to the search box that any other university site I’ve visited. You simply can’t miss it on either large screen or mobile device as the home page opens. Yes, there are “News” and “Events” sections on the home page… but well down toward the bottom. For potential students, especially those making a first visit, learning about the content behind those links is, at best, a tiny task.
Photographs? You’ll see a few at various points on the page but none at the top. More often than not, placing photos at the page opening, along with standard marketing messages, just pushed important content further away from the eyes of visitors.
Many other U.K universities do position the “search” function more prominently than U.S. universities. But none that I’ve visited position it as strongly as you’ll see at Glasgow.
Nice to visit a university that differentiates itself from most others with this home page design.
Follow the Link of the Week…
See how one university places “search” at the forefront for potential students when you visit the University of Glasgow home page.
Speed on mobile… 2.8 seconds to first view, 8.3 seconds to full interactivity
Google PageSpeed Insights measures the time to first view on a mobile phone at 2.8 seconds… better than most higher education sites. Time to full interactivity approaches the desired 5 seconds or less at 8.3 seconds.
The major step to improve mobile speed: “Eliminate render-blocking resources.”
Website Carbon Calculator… Another “Hurrah!”
Thanks to Gerry McGovern and his efforts to reduce “world wide waste” for the referral.
University of Glasgow is rated “cleaner than 63% of web pages tested.”
See how your website helps or hurts the climate. Test your website pages at “Website Carbon Calculator.”
Recommend a future Link of the Week
Always eager to get recommendations of websites that dare to be different… or just do something ordinary in a special way. Write a comment with link here or send me the link at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com.
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