One useful technique to inspire improvements to your content is to carry out a competitor analysis. This involves assessing how direct competitors communicate similar content including:
A competitor analysis can range from a full report on several sites or just a few annotated screenshots highlighting good and bad points. The extent of this depends on how much time and resource you have for your new website or redesign project, but it is always worthwhile to do some kind of analysis. One of the main benefits is that it will really help you to break free of the Imperial bubble and think about your content from a different perspective. To illustrate this, I have included a couple of examples of basic competitor analysis that I have done at the bottom of this post.
From time to time I will highlight new websites or redesigns I have worked on. In my last post for example, I featured the recent redesign of the Graduation site. With these posts my aim is to illustrate some of the techniques used for planning and producing content and approaches to designing how this content is displayed.
The subject of this project was slightly different as it was the redesign of a single, albeit important page – the main landing page for students. As the students section of the site receives over 900,000 visits a year, it was important to go through many of the same steps I would do for a whole site redesign. (more…)
I was approached by the graduation team back in February as they wanted to review and improve the Graduation website for the next Commemoration Day in October. (more…)
Another thing I will cover in this blog from time to time are any new websites or major redesigns that I have been involved with recently, and explain the process and some of the techniques that were used.
One important activity of the College is to work with small and medium size enterprises or SMEs. This helps them benefit from the talent, ideas and facilities we have here at Imperial.
As you can see from the image below, the previous landing page was not very exciting. This activity is all about outreach and engagement, so this was something that website was not addressing well.
