¸£Àû×ÅƬ

For three years, the Digital User Experience team (formerly OneWeb), has been developing new online services and products to improve the experience users have with our website, and tackle the huge size and unmanaged growth of our digital content that has built up over several decades.

Following the official end of the OneWeb programme last year, the team has been scaling up the products and services to meet the needs of a range of our website users, including current and prospective students, staff and partners.

As a result, more people are visiting our website and spending more time finding out about what we have to offer.

This update reflects the progress of the project so far and how our university community can help ensure its continued success, including the move to a new content management system and updating staff profiles and Research Projects in PURE.

What has been happening?

New services have been developed to make our content more compelling and usable to make it easier for anyone, anywhere to discover what our university is all about and to interact with us online.

This includes:

• – Our university is all about our people, so these pages are fundamental to the success of our digital offering. The new staff profile pages are interconnected with course information and research and enterprise content, to clearly show which staff are involved in which activities.
• Research pages – the launched via the faculties in March and the groups, centres and institutes pages have been created to improve the way content is displayed and linked.
• Facilities pages – The facilities pages have been improved to better showcase our world class facilities to prospective research and enterprise partners and business prospects.
• Our Impact pages – these pages will tell the story of our University’s impact on the world in a way that reflects how our users consume and engage with the content and the details which matter most to them.
• PGR pages – Improvements have been made to PGR course pages to make it far easier for prospective PGR students to find in-depth information about our PGR offer and how and where they can apply.
• ‘Study at’ pages – these pages are a single source of rich, easy to find information for each subject area. They have been tested to ensure content resonates with prospective students, allowing them to explore in detail what it’s like to study their subject of interest at Southampton.
• New navigation and architecture – The way the information is pieced together and presented, including using best practice for accessibility, will provide a seamless experience so, users will find what they are looking for with ease.
• About our University section – this includes all the organisational detail and information (faculties, schools, governance, compliance etc.)

What are the successes so far?

The changes we’ve made to services, such as information for prospective students via course pages, are having an immediate impact.

Over the past year we have seen an increase of over 1 million visitors to our website. People are spending more time on our course pages (now up to 2 mins 42 secs, an increase of 7.5%) and more people are clicking on our ‘call to action’ buttons. Visitors are also actively looking for additional information to help them progress along their application journey.

The improved user experience has contributed to the significant increase in student applications in this cycle and the new services listed above, are also expected to result in substantial benefits.

What happens next and what staff need to do?

TESTING – Starting week commencing 9 May, the Digital User Experience team will carry out a large-scale testing exercise of the new pages created through the new platform, which includes:

• Staff Profile pages
• PGR
• Research groups
• Research projects
• Research centres
• Research Institutes
• Research areas
• Study pages
• Facilities
• Overall site navigation

This testing phase is vital to ensure the whole system and the new pages create an improved user experience. Other aspects of testing include:

• Search function
• Accessibility
• Task completion

The new format for profile pages was first made available to staff in December and so far, 60% of eligible staff have engaged with the pages, with 35% making the updates needed. Thank you to everyone who has made updates. Ìý

To ensure this testing is effective as possible, members of staff who have not updated their staff profiles and Research Projects in PURE are being encouraged to do so as soon as possible.

Testing is expected to last a few weeks, which will give us time to refine the website before it goes live by 31 July 2022.

The Digital User Experience team are engaged with ADoFOs and ADRs via weekly delivery clinics to ensure we remained on track.

More information about the testing phase and the new content management system will be available in a future SUSSED post.

Links to guidance