Last week I had the pleasure of flying up to Edinburgh for the Institutional Web Managers Workshop 2012.
This was the first time I had been and I was looking forward to seeing
how my counterparts managed their websites and teams at other
universities. The venue and catering facilities at Edinburgh University
were top notch, which made it much easier to concentate on the seminars
and plenary talks which all seemed to have one overriding theme...Responsive design!
I was very pleased to hear that we're ahead of the curve on this one and that our website is on a very select list of seven HE sites
which all go some way to being responsive. 'Responsive' is basically
where a website resizes itself depending on the size of the browser in
which it is being viewed - wheter it be mobile, tablet or desktop. One
presenter went as far to say that this will be the standard for all
websites in the future, and with our personal usage statistics showing a
sharp increase in mobile visits it looks like this will definitely be
the case. Some even thought that in the future we may be designing for
mobile first!
There was also much food for thought around having a content strategy ("Content is
data. Store it. Catalog it. Share it. Present it visually. And re-use
it"), dealing with social media ("can we justify our website in an era
of social media?"), app development ("Apps are for tasks. The web is for
content") and how to manage content management systems. I had some
very interesting talks with other universities who are also using Squiz Matrix and made plenty of notes for future developments.
The
main message was that it's important we are constantly developing,
looking at our statistics to inform our next direction and, most
importantly, making sure we have quality content.
All in all, a great three days and a much longer 'to do' list...!
Haggis, Tatties and Neeps
deepphat
Hello! I head up the digital team at The Royal Veterinary College A quadruple Dad, husband and optimist - with high energy levels. I've been working on the web since 1999 and have won various industry awards for blogging, social media and web design.
Location:
Luton LU1 3JU, UK
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