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Over the past few weeks we’ve held three content workshops to help schools prepare for their new websites.
We went through each of the standard school templates referring to the pilot sites, Architecture and Sports and Exercise Sciences, for reference. Have a look at KBS pilot which is imminently launching.
We also went through all the different types of content being used and how schools can source relevant content in preparation.
Feedback
Thank you for all the useful feedback and discussions. Here is summary of the queries and the feedback from the web teams.
Profile related
Will staff profiles be able to link to social media?
Yes, you’ll be able to link to all standard social media channels, including Academia and Mendeley.
Will there be a field allowing a link to research sites on staff profile?
Yes, there will be a field where you can link an official research site.
See more on the Staff profile guidance page.
Can you embed a video into a profile page?
Not at the moment. This is in the web team’s backlog and will be added in the future.
Can we automatically pull in modules into a staff profile rather than maintaining them manually?
Sorry, not currently. We’re investigating if we have the data in a format that would allow us to introduce this in the future.
Why are you using the term ‘Administration and support’ and not ‘Professional services’ on the staff profile tabs?
To prospective students, ‘administration and support’ means something, whereas ‘professional services’ is less clear.
How can I add alumni profiles?
Discuss your priorities with your content editor. We’ll be aiming for a small, but high quality, selection.
- If you want to use ones written by the Publishing Office (eg ones already written for the subject leaflets), your content editor will add these to the Programmes Plant for relevant course pages.
- If you want to use profiles created within your school, your content editor may be able to work with you to repurpose the profile and add it to the Programmes Plant. However, due to tight resources, we may not be able to add additional profiles until post-launch. It will depend how things go.
Research related
Research.kent – what does this include?
This includes centres, groups and projects. Web Solutions will be contacting schools to discuss moving to the new centralised research framework.
I found research.kent navigation confusing – how do you link to the school?
Research.kent will continue to be monitored and refined. All sites will have links back to the division/unit. We’re are aiming for consistency across all schools.
How will we be able to represent our research themes?
You’ll have space on the research page where research themes can be mentioned and we’ll list research groups, centres and projects which will link to the details on research.kent.
Research.kent has Google ads appearing in the search results?
Thanks to the participant who pointed this out – this is being fixed.
News/events related
Can we only have specific news showing up on our site?
We will include some way to tag news stories so that you can choose which ones appear on school sites.
Is there a default image we could use for news and events if we need to?
Yes, we’ll provide a default Kent image as a fallback.
What will happen to old images in the new news template?
Some old news stories may have featured images which are not in the right aspect ratio for the new template. We’ll look to deal with this in as smart a way as possible.
Why are we not having social media feeds which are automatically updated?
Tweets and Facebook posts need to be specifically curated to attract your audiences. Presenting interesting content through social media features is more useful and targeted than an ephemeral tweet/post which may lose relevance to the page it is on.
Other content and support
Why don’t the carousels rotate automatically?
Find out why we are avoiding carousels which rotate automatically.
Global search doesn’t seem to work very well?
Currently we use Google custom search. We are slightly at its mercy to make sense of our current website. As our site simplifies, this will help with search engine optimisation. Our aim is to provide a smarter enterprise search. We’re capturing feedback to help justify funding.
How do we promote careers and employability?
We’ll promote this through featured content, particularly profiles and stories. As prospective students are focussed at a course level, it is on a course page where employability information is most relevant.
For eg
https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/88/english-language-and-linguistics#careers
Separate careers and employability pages haven’t featured as high traffic pages in our analytics. That said, we are testing out a careers/employability page for KBS as part of the school pilots. We were very cautious to include it as initially it was one of their low traffic pages (0.88% of total traffic over a year). We’ll be using it as a test case – we’ll continue to monitor and update guidance accordingly.
Where do we put student support content specific to schools?
If you have student support information aimed at current students on your existing site, this will need to be re-homed and will most likely be moved to Moodle. However, IS will work with Corporate Communications, UELT and schools to ensure we get this right and signpost this information appropriately. This work will continue alongside your site migration.
For prospective students, general student support information can be referenced on your school’s about page and featured stories.
What happens during clearing– will we have our own clearing page?
During clearing, leads and feature panels on the school site will filter applicants to the central clearing vacancies list.
Where do we put Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship school-specific information?
The scholarship in question asks potential applicants to contact the relevant academic school regarding GTAs. We will accommodate GTA posts on the school sites.
How do we show our association with Brussels and other postgrad centres?
There are multiple way to achieve this through featured content and links. You’ll work with a content editor to decide.
Will older audiences struggle with the new design?
The simplified structure, clearer navigation and content-first approach should help everyone, regardless of age. Obviously using imagery appropriate to mature students is important. In addition, we are continually monitoring usage.
It’s not my sole job and I’m worried about time.
It’s going to be work but we’ll be helping and we’ve done a lot of the legwork already (guidelines, training etc) to make it as easy for you as possible.
Site Editor, along with fewer site pages to manage, will also make life easier in the long run.
What post-project support will we receive?
We’ll be reviewing what ongoing support we can offer in the coming months.
How often should we update our content, homepage etc.?
It depends… content need to be evaluated individually and changed at certain times of the year. Some marketing content can be used perennially, whereas some stories can be used for a few months or a few weeks. A monthly review and an editorial calendar would help you plan ahead. Find out more about updating content.