Your Homepage – First Impressions Count!
Your homepage does not have to be static. Change it up to reflect the current term and highlight important information.
- Change your banner image to reflect the season and the start of a new school year. You can also add a button to your banner to link to important information.
- Review your homepage text. Is it relevant and current? Can you add or change anything to help new students and visitors to your site? Find more tips on writing for the web on our site.
- Quick Links add a nice visual element to your homepage. Change them up regularly! Use quick links to:
- link to internal pages that may be hard to find
- link to popular or important content
- create a call to action (e.g., application form)
- link to news posts that you would like to feature.
Navigation & Organization – Make stuff easy to find
- Review your menu. Is it logically organized? Is important info at the top? Are navigation items clear and descriptive? Check out our tips for building effective website navigation.
- Use a table of contents (TOC) on your web page for better navigation, search engine optimization, and accessibility.
- Categories are super useful for organizing your web content. You can categorize pages, files, people, posts, and FAQs! Use categories to pull content into different areas of your site. Find out how!
- A call to action (CTA) encourages a person to do something on your website (e.g., register for a program). It could be a link or a button. CTAs support the purpose of your web pages and help visitors know what to do.
Content – Does it support your purpose & audience?
- Audit your web content. Update information, and remove old pages and posts. Look at your site from your visitor’s point of view. Is the information current and easy to find?
- Review your analytics. What are people viewing on your website? Are they getting to important pages? What is popular? What information can you guide people to more easily?
- Make your site current by adding news posts. They don’t have to be super long. Concise and scannable is key when writing for the web! Write a welcome back post or create a short welcome back video.