04.01.08
The first study from ABS/CarringtonCrisp into business school websites looked at at eighteen sites and found eight areas that anyone managing or designing a business school website should bear in mind
These are the three main findings:
1. Don't put the Dean on the home page!
2. Make sure you have an easy-to-access (and working) site-search tool.
3. Keep in mind that content matters more than design.
Apart from the three listed above, the other five key points from the report are...
The points concerning navigation and ease of information-location reflect the fact that potential students want to find out about products and the school’s standing straight away and are frustrated by anything that slows them down.
Not appropriate
The problem with the Dean is not that he or she is a waste of space, but that the home page has so much work to do that a long exposition from the Dean is not an appropriate use of the space available. Much better, according to Andrew Crisp, the report author, to link away to the Dean’s words, so drawing viewers into the site.
Nobody yet has cracked on-line presentation completely, but the two top sites to emerge from the study were those run by Bradford and Cass.