Expectations were high for the launch of the new LBCC website Fall term 2014, but murmurs on campus spread and excitement turned into questioning the $89,000 purchase.
Months of planning went into organizing focus groups concerning the elements of the site. From Aug. 2012 to April 2013 three separate groups were formed to discuss the old website layout versus the new layout.
About 150 people in total were involved in the discussions.
"We took information received [in the focus groups] and digested it and put it out on the web," said Dale Stowell the Executive Director of Institutional Advancement at the college.
Development of the new site didn't take place overnight. There was a soft launch in Fall 2013 to gather feedback from users. Suggestions and comments came in from about 200 people.
"They were all very helpful and helped us make good decisions on what to do next."
The series of focus groups featured local high school students, current students, and faculty. All groups were conducted separate from one another.
Groups were given the old site and new site and asked to respond to a series of questions.
"It's Google analytics. It was a measure to see how people behaved on each page."
Participants were asked to give suggestions as to what "quick links" and information they expected during navigation. Based off the suggestions the "quick links" were added to the homepage.
The first group were volunteers from Albany High School. They were asked what links they would look for, if those links were easy to find, and if the website was competitively attractive compared to other colleges they may have shopped.
The second group were faculty. They were asked to give feedback on building a better, more intuitive and user friendly web service. Moodle, the online student portal, was included in their discussion.
Last were current students at LBCC. They were asked if the website reflected the school, what kind of key-words they would look for on the site, and the ease of use.
William Allison was a LBCC student among the focus group.
"They asked what words would make you want to come to the school, that's how they came up with [the word] 'inspired.'"
That catch phrase can now be seen heavily on the site and on brochures throughout campus.
Current student and Open Source club member Russell Ruby is not a fan of the over-use of the word.
"The word 'inspire' on every page over and over almost makes it meaningless."
According to Allison the consensus among focus group members were they did not like the old site. They agreed it was text heavy and not visually pleasing with photos. He felt a focus during the group was how to design the site to influence potential students to enroll at LBCC.
According to Stowell feedback regarding the lack of visually pleasing material resulted in hiring a photographer for a two-day shoot. They got 180 photographs of student life to be used on the site.
But not all of the suggestions Allison recalled were effectively put in place from a current student's point of view.
"One thing I mentioned in the focus group was a link for The Commuter on the homepage. There is a link to The Commuter now but it takes three clicks to get there."
Some students agree the site is more user friendly to potential students verses enrolled students. Many links take multiple clicks to get to a place that students would be interested in.
"I put my search into Google and it shows me where to go faster than using the website," said Ruby.
Future students may want to explore the site but current students want to get information quickly. Students expect to see what is important to them in the most prominent places.
An example given by Stephen Gibble, student and Open Source club member, is the placement of Tweets. He feels campus news should be quickly visible to students but instead Tweets are at the very bottom of the page.
Gibble has some other gripes with the site.
"At first glance it looks very nice. The beef I have with it is for current LB students. On the old website the information density was high [but] with the new one is mostly pictures with happy people."
With that being said, a strong point of the site Gibble feels is its mobile friendliness. The new column design works well on phones because it collapses down so its usable on the small screen. This was a big improvement from the old site.
"I really don't have any complaints about the mobile version."
One major improvement to the site was to in fact make it mobile friendly. The old site was so outdated that its compatibility with cell phones was non-existent.
"The company we work with does technical design suggested to make it mobile intuitive," said Stowell.
The site is still a work in progress.
As students may recall, when it was first launched there were hundreds of broken links. After months of fixing them they are mostly gone due to student feedback and running broken link reports.
There are two groups that meet biweekly to continue improvements on the site. One is a web implementation group that works on use and content and the other a web strategy group that works to develop and evolve the site.
Suggestions for continued improvement can be sent to web-suggestions@linnbenton.edu.
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