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Analysis of Three Engineering School Websites University of Michigan Purdue University University of Florida By Jeff Macharyas | March 24, 2013

his is a quickand very roughanalysis of the websites of three Engineering Colleges websites. This does illustrate, however, that there are many details involvedand some may have a large impact and some might not matter at all. I do think it is important to constantly evaluate all forms of communication used by an organization, be it websites, printed matter, emails, or whatever. Technology changes, peoples attitudes and moods change, and new methods pop onto the scene constantly. What is considered must-do one day quickly becomes so yesterday. That is very apparent in website design and production. Not long ago, using Flash was the cool thing to do. Now, finding Flash on a website just frustrates the millions of iUsers who cant see the content on their iPhones and quickly move on to the next site that has them in mind. I compared the mechanics of the websites, the social media access and usage and a few other general aspects. I believe each of these sections could be analyzed in much greater depth and may yield some interesting results that could be translated into a better user experience for visitors to the website which could then lead to much more. It is important to make sure that every effort made is for an established goal and if results arent realized, try something else. I found it fascinating to conduct this study. I learned some new ways to analyze and improve the online user experience and was surprised by some of the things I found. Webpage mechanics: I tested the websites using some free, online analytic tools. I would use these results only as a guide, as further testing and comparison would be necessary to draw valid conclusions. Via Alexa: the site rank total/site rank-US were: Michigan: 3389/1192 Purdue: 3751/924 UF: 5846/1724. Efforts should be made to validate this information and find ways to increase the score for UF. Using these numbers, Michigans US rank-compared-to-total was 35%, Purdue was 24%, UF was 29%. I noticed that Michigan did not have a home tab on its interior pages, making it difficult to get back to the homepage. The logo did act as a homepage button, though. Both UF and Purdue did make it easy to return to the homepage. In comparing title tags for each of these three sample sites, I discovered the following: Michigan: College of Engineering | Michigan Engineering Purdue: College of Engineering, Purdue Engineering UF: UF | College of Engineering | University of Florida

In researching proper title tag writing, I determined that each of these could be improved upon. Michigan says Michigan but not University of Michigan. Could be construed as the State of Michigan. Purdue used a comma, which is not considered proper in a title tag. UF was somewhat redundant in saying UF at the beginning and University of Florida at the end. The title tag should tell what it is and then what it is about. I would suggest perhaps: Engineering College | University of Florida. This would reduce the frequency of of, there are no commas, and it starts with the most important aspect of what this site is (an engineering college). There are several stop words that should be avoided, and of is one of them. (Although it seems almost impossible to avoid altogether.) I checked the sites using Visible.net. This site scores the selected site based on several factors and offers suggestions on how to improve its score. Michigan had a score of 42 of 300, UF 40/300, and Purdue did not score because it did not give me an option to check using HTTPS. So, just as a test, I checked my own site, www.macharyas.com, and received a score of 116/300. Of course, my site only consists of one page and some out-links. Visible.net recommends the following, as part of a plan to increase its SEO quality: Add a meta description (neither UF nor Michigan had this, but Purdue did). Add meta keywords. Add an author tag. Reduce the number of out-links. Increase the number of in-links. Michigans website did not use a secure server, Purdues did, and UFs was accessible via both secure and non-secure (HTTPS vs. HTTP). Im not quite sure how much this matters; it would require further investigation, but I though it interesting that the three schools came up three different ways. US News and World Report Rankings US News and World Reports: Methodologies Used for Ranking Schools http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate- schools/articles/2013/03/11/methodology-best-engineering-schools-rankings I studied USN&WRs rankings and methodology of Engineering Schools to determine how UF stacked up against other schools, and in particular, Michigan and Purdue. Michigan appeared in 9 of the sub-categories, Purdue 6, and UF 1 (#6 in Bio Engineering). Im not sure how much stock should be placed in these rankings, but I do think it would be worth exploring ways to improve upon it. As a parent with college-bound students, checking all sourcesincluding rankingsis one of the tools used in selecting a school. It would be interesting to find out just exactly what information they received about UF to make their ranking decision, and find out if they were to be supplied with more, or better, information, UF would rank higher.

It was also interesting to note that Engineering ranked third most popular major at UF, at 11%. I checked Business Insiders ranking of the Worlds Best Engineering Schools. UF ranked #46, Purdue #14, and Michigan #13. CalTech was #1. Again, it would be interesting to see how they arrived at this and how it could be improved upon. I would recommend scouring all the ranking sites and publications and determine how they arrived at their conclusions, and if warranted, investigate how to improve the rankings. It is imperative that other people say positive things about you to build on the reputation of the organization. Once accomplished, that information could be leveraged in many different wayspress releases, blog postings, etc. Social Media via the Website Purdue: Links in footer for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter; hard to find (all go to the general university) Michigan: Facebook feed; links at top for Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube; prominent placement for Facebook feed; other links at top are easy to find UF: No social media links on homepage, but buttons are found on interior pages for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter Recommendation: Add social buttons to homepage Comparison of Social Media Sites Used by the Three Schools Facebook UF: Interesting content; 1,905 likes, most recent post: 6 days old Michigan: Interesting content; 12,867 likes, most recent post: 2 days old Purdue: Links to general University FB, not valid Recommendation: Add link to homepage, produce more frequent posts, and see if the likes go up. Although this may work, it should be noted that just being liked on Facebook might not necessarily yield tangible results. Twitter UF: 1,941 followers, most recent post: 6 days. The logo that is used is nice, but is dated 2012, and is too complicated to be used as a small Twitter icon. Repeating gator logo in the background doesnt convey UF. Michigan: 5,893 followers, most recent post: 2 days. Blue and gold all over, looks like University of Michigan. Purdue: Link goes to general university Twitter. Not valid. I would recommend using UF colors, a less complicated logo, current postings. YouTube UF: 20 subscribers, 4,833 video views Michigan: 883 subscribers, 718,604 video views Purdue: Links to general university YouTube. Not valid. Recommendation and analysis: Michigan obviously wins by the numbers. Michigans video quality seems a bit better. I was also concerned about UFs Pree Silva video. She

appeared kind of negative and the camera work was a shaky and off-center. Michigan also used their M logo, whereas, UF used an unidentified persons face. I would recommend replacing this. The title of the page for UF is Gator Engineering whereas UMs is Michigan Engineering. Michigan carries through on their name, whereas UF mixes UF and Gator branding and is inconsistent. Michigans newest video is from two weeks ago, UFs newest video is nine months old. There are only 10 days to leverage a YouTube video before it becomes stale and relegated to the archives. I would recommend keeping this channel updated. Michigan also did well by adding a Michigan-branded splash-screen at the beginning of each video and added a Michigan M bug in the lower right corner during playback. There was also a YouTube window on their homepage. I would explore the possibility of adding those items. Tumblr UF: No Tumblr channel. Michigan: Tumblr channel with many pictures. Purdue: No Tumblr channel. Recommendation: Investigate whether this is a valid channel to showcase the UF College of Engineering brand. Mobile: All three sites rendered well on my iPhone and iPad. I did notice the Rockwell font used on UFs site did not show up on the iPad or iPhone. I checked the html and css via Firefox, but I didnt see a quick solution. Ive been using Google Fonts across desktops and mobile devices with success. Since mobile use is exploding, it would be worth it to explore how to better adapt the website for use on mobile devices. I reviewed many Colleges of Engineering websites and found a few that worked well on my iPhone (engineering.osu.edu {Ohio State}, engr.washington.edu {Univ. of Washington}, engineering.missouri.edu {Univ. of Missouri}). In these three examples, it was easy to read and navigate the site on the small screen. I thought Missouris was particularly easy to view on the iPhone, but the desktop website was somewhat lacking and even a bit bizarre. Links from Main University Site I compared UFs, Michigans and Purdues ease of access to the Engineering site and found that UF was the easiest to find and navigate. Purdue was especially difficult and required the user to sort through the alphabet just to get to it. Florida Engineer Magazine Archives I was able to find an online PDF of the Summer 2008 edition of Florida Engineer. I really liked it; Im sorry its not still in print. It may be possible to re-use the content on the website, though, either as simple PDF links (if available) or some of the articles as retro items. At Selling Power magazine, we re-used magazine content as collections in several books and items for the website. The books were immensely popular and were reprinted numerous times to keep up with the demand. Im not

sure if this could by applied in UFs case, but it might be interesting to explore the possibilities. Here is a link from Mequoda that discusses this opportunity: http://www.mequoda.com/articles/content-marketing/content-repurposing-why- to-release-your-archives-and-recycle-content/