Characteristics of College Web Page that will Attract Attention and Provide Information to Users

By: Bob Wiser

Characteristics of College Web Page that will Attract Attention and Provide Information to Users
By Bob H. Wiser
The purpose of this paper is to determine what key characteristics should be used in developing Web pages at a College that will attract and provide meaningful information to internal and external users. Internal and external users include administration, faculty, staff, students or potential students, local community and parents.
How Necessary is a Web Page?
In some Colleges division managers must take charge and produce their own web pages. I believe that a divisional web page will help increase a College’s edge over some schools by providing a service most prospective students expect to see and increasing availability of information and forms to users. Yet Would a divisional web page benefit the College enough to allocate limited human resources to this effort? The following studies suggest that a Web page is critical to individual divisions and to the College as a whole.
Himowitz (1996) purports that it is essential that each division and program have it’s own Web page to achieve a competitive (over other colleges) advantage by providing on-line forms and information (as cited in Mechitov, Moshkovich, Underwood, and Taylor, 2001, p. 2).
Educause (2000) performed a survey of 10,000 high school students and found “a university’s web site is the third most important source of information for prospective students, subordinate only to a campus visit and a conversation with a current student” (p. 1).
Technical Bandwidth
Just as important as the college’s bandwidth is the bandwidth of prospective students and their parents. Monroy (2000) explains how many colleges and universities “have higher power connectivity than our external audiences” (p. 59). Even focus groups sometimes use higher power machines and thus do not realize that the audience is not going to see what they see.
Student or Prospective Student Web Preferences
According Rob Herzog, director of new media for Wabash College, as cited in McCollum (1999) the Web page is the first image prospective students may get of the college (p. 2).
Moshkovich, Underwood, and Taylor (2001) analyzed and categorized student perceptions of 13 university Web sites. They found that students like web sites to be well-designed, attractive, quickly downloadable, highly informative, comprehensive, logically organized, and have well-identified links. Students highlighted entertainment links, such as campus tours, audio and video as being important. Students also believed information should be easily accessible and available for all university services. Positive impressions made on the home page can be quickly offset by frustrations on other web pages and links. Students complained when too much plain text was used (p. 7).
I believe that student perceptions are critical to the ongoing success Colleges and therefore, we must consider all of these characteristics while building a web page.
Administrative and Faculty Web Page Preferences
Warlick (1999) states that some important aspects of developing a College web page are accurately reflecting the school’s culture, maintaining interactive information, creating a site that is easy to use and maintain, using separate sub-communities and maintaining security (p. 16).
Kapoun (2002) teaches criteria for web evaluation in library instruction classes (p. 2). Even though a web page will not likely be used as reference material at a library, Kapoun identifies some key components that should be considered in web page development. He suggests that a web site should include: the author and institution, how to contact the author, author credentials, commonly used browser technology, and information that is accurate, objective and current.
And finally Bockkanic and Hogan (1999) warn that, “New Web technology … has led academic institutions into a publishing arena that is fraught with unfamiliar rules and attendant significant legal risk” (p. 373). Some of their main concerns were complex copyright laws, such as infringement, defamation, likeness, and intellectual property protection. College administration, faculty and staff need to be aware of these issues.
Conclusion
Consider the College’s culture while developing web pages along with the needs of users. Try to create a good first impression on users. Plan to lead your audience through the site by making it well organized and easy to use. Finally, strive to make information and forms useful and current.

References
Bockkanic, W. N., & Hogan, P. T. (1999). Legal issues involving the operation of a university web site. Journal of Education for Business, 74(6), 373.
Educause (2000). Giving the web the new college try. Educause Review, 35(3), 1.
Himowitz, M. J. et al. (1996). Hunting for college on your PC. Fortune, 134, 201.
Kapoun, J. (n.d.). Teaching undergrads web evaluation: A guide for library instruction. Retrieved March 29, 2002, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/undwebev.html Web Site: http://
McCollum, K. (1999). Colleges revamp web pages with professional help. Chronicle of Higher Education, 45(45), 2.
Mechitov, A. I., Moshkovich, H. M., Underwood, S. H., & Taylor, R. G. (2001). Comparative analysis of academic web sites. Education, 121(4), 1-11.
Monroy, T. (2000). Colleges get bad grades for web sites. Interactive Week, 7(17), 59.
Warlick, D. (1999). Maintaining college web sites is a community effort. Community College Week, 11(18), 16.