Some recognition for our messaging work on the USF site
Visit Bob’s Link of the Week page for the full story.
We’ve been fans of Bob’s work ever since hearing him speak at EduWeb 2007 in Baltimore; it was exciting to hear someone tell a crowd of higher ed Web people that “message control is dead.” It’s a really important message, and Bob is just the messenger to tell it.
About USF
The previous version of the USF site had a lot of good content, but almost all of it was segregated by schools, departments, etc.; there was very little messaging on the site about USF as a whole. Although there are considerable differences among USF’s schools, there are certainly some qualities that unite them all: an emphasis on service, strong academics, Jesuit values, an international focus, and so on.
As part of our information architecture recommendations for the USF site, we proposed a new About USF section of the site that would group together pages written primarily for an outside audience. These pages explore each of USF’s primary strengths in depth— from academic excellence to our San Francisco location to our global reach to our Jesuit values. Our goal was to make these strengths into more than bullet points— to communicate USF’s values by showing, not just telling.
Here’s what Bob wrote:
Most weeks on Friday I add a link to a college or university website that is superior to what else is available in student recruitment, alumni relations, fundraising or other areas that I visit in preparing presentations and website reviews for my clients.
5 March 2010… University of San Francisco… “Why Students Choose…”
Words can have more impact than video. Especially if you make them easy to read. The home page at University of San Francisco stands out for a clean, simple design that is oriented primarily toward potential new students.
What makes that obvious? My eyes went to the first item in the left column navigation under the “About USF” heading: “Why Students Choose USF” was hard to miss. (You’ll also see high visibility links for undergrad and graduate admissions and the academic programs offered.)
Larger than normal font
Following that link lead to a remarkable design feature: a large font size at the top of the “Why Students Choose…” page made it easy to scan the 5 available reasons in about 5 seconds:
- Academic experience
- Jesuit tradition
- Diverse
- International opportunities
- San Francisco
Don’t make people squint
Each topic is presented within a single paragraph in green, underlined text that’s much larger than what continues lower on the page.
People who take my next “Writing Right for the Web” webinar may likely see this page used to illustrate a point of special importance when visitors first arrive at a web page: “Don’t make them squint.”
Thanks for noticing, Bob.