Every year, eur.nl is visited millions of times. It seems obvious that our website should work well, but to achieve this, the team of Nicole Groen and Dennis Cohn work hard behind the scenes. Recently many improvements have been made to make the website even more user friendly, Dennis says. "The website is now much calmer for the visitor. The atmosphere that we as EUR want to radiate is also better reflected. Just look at the header."
Of course, a website is there for its visitors. That is why this year extensive research was carried out into what visitors think of www.eur.nl. "The design was more than five years old. It was time to refresh it. We started by investigating the header, the area at the top of all web pages. There was a coloured shape over it, the 'swoosh'. This did not show the image well and made it difficult for the editors to find a good picture", says Dennis Cohn, Drupal Front-end Developer. Drupal is the CMS program on which eur.nl runs. "Now look at the header. It looks much calmer and fresher. You can now actually see the photo. The experience of the page has become better and that has been implemented on all pages. The research also shows that visitors have a clear preference for this design."
Renewed web pages for all study programmes
Based on the research results, Nicole and Dennis' team implemented many improvements in the website. These can be seen by the visitor in the adjustments to the design. "We switched to rounded corners and more white space. This is reflected on all pages and makes it more of a whole. Because there are fewer differences, it is much calmer", says Nicole, who as Product Owner Drupal is responsible for all technical improvements to the website.
Standardisation is the word that keeps coming up. Dennis: "Editors had a lot of freedom in designing the pages of their courses. As a result, there were many differences between the web pages of different studies. We also received this feedback from our research. It was unclear to students. I tried several times to register for different studies. It just didn't work, because the registration button was so hidden. The editors couldn't really do much about that, there were just too many options."
Clear route for visitors
Now the web pages of different studies look much the same. With improvements, the route that the visitor takes on the website has been made clearer. Nicole: "We have placed two buttons at the bottom of the pages: previous and next. We can already see that they are being used a lot. You can now easily walk through the entire story of a study." According to Dennis, the visual experience is also better now: "We have added icons to the 'facts and figures' about a study. It looks more playful and clear. It is more appealing. The great thing about these adjustments to the study pages is that we can also incorporate this into the rest of the website."
The focus is also shifting more and more to mobile. Of our visits, 58% are desktop and 42% mobile. Dennis: "Especially for study programmes. The young generations do a lot of things on their mobiles, and students in particular. On mobile phones, we have moved the menu of the study programmes to a fixed menu bar. Before, it was hidden at the bottom of the content."
Accessibility: being accessible to everyone
As an organisation, you want your web pages to be accessible to everyone. This is also called digital accessibility WCAG2.0 or simply: 'accessibility'. Dennis has a simple example: "Some people can't use a mouse, so you have to be able to navigate through the page with the tab button. The order must be correct so that you are not led criss-cross through a page. Another important aspect is that the contrasts are high enough throughout and that the alternative texts of buttons and images are correctly filled in. For visually impaired people, these have to be read out loud, so it is important that this is technically correct.
Soon, this must also be properly regulated by law. "As an organisation, you must ensure that the content is accessible to people with a disability. That can be in all kinds of areas, from visual to dyslexia or ADHD," says Nicole, who has been working at the EUR since 2000. "Fortunately, we have come a long way." A scan was made of part of eur.nl. They looked at the content and the underlying technology. Dennis: "After the scan, we made the website technically in order. We already comply with the guidelines.
Nicole and Dennis' team are far from done. There is always room for improvement. Nicole: "We are now working on a new design of the search function on the website, so that you can get to the right content faster and thereby take the visitor by the hand more." Fortunately, the team does that again one day a week on the campus. Dennis: "It's great that we can do that again. It's a little tradition to get a sandwich at the HAS. They know exactly what everyone's order is. It's good fuel for building an even better website.
- More information
In the category 'Education & Training', the EUR website has also been nominated for Website of the Year 2021. Voting is open until the week of 15 November. Make sure we win the award and vote for us: https://websitevhjaar.nl/vote/erasmus-universiteit-rotterdam/index.html