Why university websites need to work well to succeed

LONDON - July 24, 2013 - PRLog -- It needs to be fully functional, with nothing broken or missing on the page, meet legal requirements such as accessibility, perform well and make sure users get a great experience so they want to come back, as well as ensuring Google and other search engines can easily add it to their indexes.

That’s why the Sitemorse Q3 Index of UK university and higher education websites is important, spotlighting those establishments that are currently leading the field with the best-working websites in the sector.

De Montfort University of Leicester takes the honours this time, topping the survey with an overall rating of 7.3 out of a possible ten marks. The site scores well on accessibility (8/10) and rises 32 places since our Q2 Index to take top billing.

South Cheshire College and Guildford College of Further and Higher Education take second and third place, with scores averaging 7/10. Guildford’s site has greatly improved in our review, moving up 50 places this time. Making up the rest of our top five rated sites are the Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, and North Manchester’s Hopwood Hall College. Both have scored consistently well in previous Sitemorse Index reviews.

Improved sites climbing our table for this index include American InterContinental University - London (rising 190 places to 89^th position), The University of West London (+165), Bristol, City of Bristol College (+152), Wirral Metropolitan College (+135) and London Metropolitan University (+117).

Sitemorse reviews the websites of businesses and organisations in a number of sectors, and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our website, www.sitemorse.com.

Why it’s vital that your site is accessible

Websites that can’t be navigated by disabled users, apart from being illegal, may discriminate against students who cannot then take a full part in social, educational, and professional activities on campus.

The Equality Act came into force in October 2010, replacing the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in England, Scotland and Wales. Like the DDA, the Equality Act was introduced with the intention of comprehensively tackling the discrimination which many disabled people face.

Highest scorers on accessibility in this index, rated eight out of ten, were De Montfort University, and the University of Birmingham.

Our conclusion: Universities and FE colleges have to work hard to meet rising student expectations and ensure their institutions stand out from the rest.  Around 40% of would-be university students pick their chosen seat of learning by looking at university websites – and the website is a huge source of information.

University applications from UK students are down for the second year running, official figures show, thanks to recent rises in UK tuition fees and competition from the creation of free massive open online courses. These institutions need to make it as easy as possible for would-be applicants by making sure their sites are error-free, accessible and searchable.

About the Index

The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience.

Sitemorse services such as Governisation and the Web Management Toolkit immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, help demonstrate real improvement and ensure you have control and confidence in your web presence.

They will help you minimise unnecessary risk, issues covering everything from compliance with web standards to helping you deal with malware, protect your brand across even a large web presence, and enhance search engine optimisation to help more potential customers find you. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. We offer a confidential internal 'company wide' website testing and benchmarking service - allowing you to review the position of all the sites in your organisation. Contact us to request further details and / or an example.

More information

More information about our surveys and what they test can be found on our website http://www.sitemorse.com/survey/

For further Information: Geoff Paddock, Head of Communications on +44 207 183 5588gpaddock@Sitemorse.com