*Disclaimer* This work was intended to be read in hard copy and is therefore written in a linear format, disregarding the rules I have outline in the piece itself.
The mark of a good webpage, among other things, must be that it delivers what the audience wants. The online reader is fickle, impatient and demands a lot of information in very little space. So in order to evaluate any website, I’ve found that I must first evaluate the visiting audience. To examine this point, I have chosen three university sports websites which can be compared in usability, cross-promotion, and content. The first is the sports website for the University of Melbourne, my current institute of higher learning. The next is my alma mater, the University of Miami and their Hurricane Sports page. And last I will look at the Australian University Games website, a program in which I will participate in September 2009, part of the Australian University Sport website. I have a personal connection to all of these schools and sports programs, and therefore can consider myself a member of the target audience of each.
The first website is the sports home page of the University of Melbourne. As an Australian university, sports are generally open to the entire student and staff population, as well as in most cases the general populace of Melbourne also. There are fees associated with participation, and the website’s aim is to get involvement (and thereby get income for the sports programs and departments). The article I chose is up on the main page of the website as featured content, and is linked with a teaser and option for more, as well as a liked image.
The copy of the article gives the basic rundown of the who, what, where, when and why of the particular event, in this case the men’s basketball team winning their division championship. There is a heading, which gives the most comprehensive information of the three articles, and specifies the key points of the article. Following are a date, and an author, then about 650 words of plain text broken up into 11 chunks. I will give the author credit for chunking, but that is about it. In order to accommodate our dynamic online reading style, online text must be scannable, according to Jakob Nielson. This includes highlighted keywords (including hypertext links), useful and meaningful sub-headings, and bulleted lists where necessary. This article ignores each of these techniques. Good online paragraphs should employ only one idea, but in this case the majority of ideas are scattered and the writing leaves much to be desired. The writing follows a somewhat inverted pyramid style, with the most important information at the beginning, however even this is poorly executed.
Following in suit, the article itself contains no links. Links are necessary for a sense of connectedness, to give the information on the page a context, and to make the article influential. Scott Karp outlines how links transform online reading from scattered to organized, and create networks that can follow a linear or dynamic format. Clearly the reader in this instance is not intended to have further questions, need more information, or clarification about the article. However, at the very least the page could link to the Basketball division website, perhaps information about the team, or past articles relating to a similar topic. The page does have links to the parent page (The University of Melbourne), as well as easy navigation on the left hand side to the home page, and other areas of the website. Contact information for the author is given at the bottom, but in a non-linking format. This page loses more points for the inconvenience associated with having to copy and paste the email address.
In terms of design, the page is simple and easy to navigate, but certainly earns no credit for style or originality. The background does not distract from the text, the navigation buttons are easy to locate, understand and use, and formats are consistent throughout the website. One of the two graphics on the page has a caption, however neither provides an alt label (which is a caption given when your mouse scrolls over the image).
The University of Melbourne sports website is a host to many teams which are independently owned, and each pays ‘rent’ to use the school’s facilities. Therefore the school is not making money from the sports or players, and needless to say the men’s basketball division 2 championship would not have brought in any money, or school or team awareness. The website, and this page, are a reflection of this.
On the flip side of the coin, The University of Miami is a huge sports school, where a great deal of income is brought in by the sports programs. In particular, football, basketball and baseball. The university’s sports programs and website are sponsored by Nike, Gatorade, CSTV, CBS, JetBlue and MuscleMilk, among others. The aim of the website designers here is to inform current students, players and fans, and also to gain sponsorship from several areas. Just a look at the homepage tells a very different story from the previous example. There are flashing ads, an events calendar, scrolling headlines, sponsor links, shops, and a plethora of distracting, eye catching links. The chosen article is not even regarding a big-money team, or a big championship, but merely one win by the low-profile volleyball team. However, as part of the featured content, it is one of the scrolling headline images, and easy to click to with a link on the image, as well as the headline.
The article and the page as a whole show a much higher calibre of online writing and organisation than the first example. The article begins with a heading, then a sub-heading (kicker) for clarification. However the heading does not cover some of the most important points of the article, which are the records set by several players. Following the headings, we are given the date and location of the event. Immediately we are presented with two links to the box score (one in PDF format for convenience), to accompany the play by play we are about to read. Every step of the way, names are highlighted, and linked to the player biography on a separate page, forming a narrative for the reader to follow. The copy is chunked and organised in an easy to read, top-down manner. A link back to the homepage is embedded in the text itself. This page provides a high level of reader interactivity through links, multimedia, and colour. However, it is lacking in use of white space, which is important to help users reduce the cognitive load and digest chunks of information, according to Smashing Magazine.
At the bottom of the page, 26 other sites are linked, however they are all other CBS sponsored sites. Although readers should be wary of the same ownership of all pages, there are also links to related articles and college sports pages on the right hand side of the page. There are also links to every other area of the website, from other sports, to shopping, to tickets, to team rosters. It appears to be a trend with this style of website and writing, by the school and about the school, that any outside opinion is discounted, whereas a news website writing about unrelated and unaffiliated news would be wise to link to other sources and trusted sites.
This page has a higher standard of graphics, with only one associated picture and caption (excluding an alt label), but an overwhelming amount of sports related images, advertisements, and colourful text surrounding the article itself. It remains easy to navigate, but has much more choice, as well as distraction for the reader. The advertisements, although annoying on most websites, in this case are fairly unobtrusive, but give the page a sense of credibility, youthfulness and professionalism, which are important to the target audience.
The final example differs in the fact that it is not intended only to promote one school. Instead, it is set up to inform participants about Australian University Games, held once every year around Australia. Students are invited for 1 week of competition against other schools around the country. The parent website is Australian University Sport, associated with the Australian Government Sports Commission. The article I chose regards one student’s success at the World University Games.
The article is linked as a part of the scrolling headlines on the right side of the home page, and can also be accessed through a series of links from the left hand menu of the first page. The first page highlights several in-house articles, but also links to some outsourced articles from other news venues, including the Age, the Courier and the Sydney Morning Herald. This article, although the shortest and chunked into only 5 parts, it is the best example of the three of inverted pyramid style writing, giving the most important information first, and trickling down with details. The important information such as date, author and headline are given, however it does not have a subheading. The heading alludes to the key points in the article, which are the accomplishments of the students, but remains quite vague. The copy has no live links, but does have a lot of contact information at the bottom of the page for follow up, and a linked email address. The side bar of the article page cross-promotes related headlines, making navigation easier. As with the first article, the links on the left side and bottom take the reader back to other parts of the website, but not beyond the boundaries of Australian University Sport.
The graphics and texts are less visually appealing and easy to navigate than the university of Miami website, however funding may again be to blame here. The page is nonetheless easy to understand, and the article has a high level of readability because there are few distracting elements. The entertainment value is low, but information value is high. This page follows several of the outlined features of a good website, as pointed out by Robin Williams: the background does not compete with the text, it is easy to read but not too big, and the information is clear.
Each article has value in its own right, however the University of Miami article, and the whole website, do the best job of understanding and acknowledging their audience. The users of each site are likely to be university students interested in athletics. This target audience is likely to prefer a dynamic reading style, especially online reading, and so the best approach to reach this group is lots of graphics and multimedia. The second article also does the best job of linking to other parts of the website (in the text itself), and to other sites that may be of interest to the reader (despite being owned by the same parent company). Ultimately, there are infinite ways to make a good website, but following certain guidelines and writing for your audience are certainly among the most important for success.
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