Purpose
The purpose of this analysis is to examine the navigational systems used on university home pages, in order to shed light on:
- Which links and types of links are most common
- Which types of organizational schemes are most common
- Which types of labeling and terminology are the most common
This analysis focuses only on navigational systems (e.g, "menus") and not on all of the links on each page. Links to specific news or feature stories, events, specific schools or colleges, video clips, etc. were not included in this analysis.
Methods
For this analysis I counted the number of times a particular link appeared on the 20 home pages. In some cases different terms were used to describe functionally equivalent things (e.g., "Athletics" and "Sports"). In those cases I group the items under the same heading. In addition, I only counted those items plainly visible on the home page; items occurring in pop-up menus were not included in the count (45% of sites used pop-up menus to one degree or another).
I did not always count every single link on each page. There were some links - that I either felt weren't relevant to my goals (e.g., links to specific news and feature stories, privacy policies, "About this Site" links) or that were unique to the specific site - that I did not count. In total I counted 78 different links, and a total of 493 links on the 20 home pages (an average of 25 links per page).
Loosely following Rosenfeld and Moreville's (2002) list of organizational systems, I divided links into one of four types:
- Topical/informational - pertaining to specific topics
- Organizational - pertaining to the organization of the university
- Audience - addressed toward specific audience groups
- Task - pertaining to actions and things that can be done
I chose these four types as opposed to Rosenfeld and Moreville's "topic", "task", "audience" and "metaphor" both because I felt that they ignored the fact that many Web sites organize their sites to reflect their internal organization, and because metaphoric organizational systems are pretty much a thing of the past (for good reason). These four types follow those used in my post on the Navigational Structure of the CSU, Chico Home Page.
Defining the types of some links was difficult. Is "Libraries" and organizational link or a topical link? How about "Directory"? I made my best guess and you may not agree
The links that I counted and their relative frequency appear in the table below.
| Link | Percent of Sites | Type | |
| Academics | 100% | Topical/Informational | |
| Research | 95% | Topical/Informational | |
| Alumni | 90% | Audience | |
| Faculty | 80% | Audience | |
| Athletics/Sports | 75% | Topical/Informational | |
| Libraries | 75% | Organizational | |
| Contact Us | 75% | Task | |
| Jobs/Employment | 75% | Topical/Informational | |
| Students | 75% | Audience | |
| Staff | 75% | Audience | |
| About | 70% | Topical/Informational | |
| Giving | 65% | Task | |
| Admissions | 60% | Topical/Informational | |
| Parents | 60% | Audience | |
| Administration | 55% | Organizational | |
| Arts/Museums/Culture | 55% | Topical/Informational | |
| Calendar | 55% | Topical/Informational | |
| Campus Map | 55% | Topical/Informational | |
| Directory/Index | 55% | Topical/Informational | |
| Prospective Students | 55% | Audience | |
| Colleges & Schools | 50% | Organizational | |
| Visiting | 45% | Topical/Informational | |
| Medical Center | 40% | Topical/Informational | |
| Continuing/Distance Ed | 35% | Topical/Informational | |
| 35% | Task | ||
| International | 35% | Topical/Informational | |
| News | 35% | Topical/Informational | |
| Visitors | 35% | Audience | |
| Financial Aid | 30% | Topical/Informational | |
| Friends | 30% | Audience | |
| Departments | 25% | Organizational | |
| Diversity | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Facts | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Photos/Video | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Portal | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Recreation | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Student Life | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Tours | 25% | Topical/Informational | |
| Academic Calendar | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Application | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Campus Life | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Centers & Institutes | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Community | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Graduate Studies | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Health & Safety | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Offices | 20% | Organizational | |
| Outreach | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Services | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| U & Town | 20% | Topical/Informational | |
| Business & Industry | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Computing | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Disability/Accessibility | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Events | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Find People | 15% | Task | |
| Housing | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Site map | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Technology | 15% | Topical/Informational | |
| Patients | 15% | Audience | |
| Community | 15% | Audience | |
| Advising | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Catalog | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Courses | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Help | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Majors | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Transfer | 10% | Topical/Informational | |
| Donors | 10% | Audience | |
| Bookstore | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Class Schedule | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Collections | 5% | Organizational | |
| Fellowships | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Human Resources | 5% | Organizational | |
| Orientation | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| President/Chancellor | 5% | Organizational | |
| Spotlights | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Tranportation | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Tuition/Fees | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Undergrad Research | 5% | Topical/Informational | |
| Foundations & Corps | 5% | Audience |
Analysis
Far and away the most common type of link on university home pages are topical/informational in nature.
| Type | Total | Percent |
| Topical/Informational | 54 | 69% |
| Audience | 12 | 15% |
| Organizational | 8 | 10% |
| Task | 4 | 5% |
However, when you look at only the most popular links (occurring on 50% or more of home pages), a somewhat different picture emerges. Audience links double in frequency, accounting for 30% of the most popular links, and indicating that audience-oriented links are among the most popular. In fact, 18 of the 20 sites had a specific navigational structures for audience groups.
| Type | Total | Percent |
| Topical/Informational | 10 | 48% |
| Audience | 6 | 29% |
| Organizational | 3 | 14% |
| Task | 2 | 9% |
Other than that, there's no discernable pattern as to the nature of the most common links. Of course Academics and Research get a lot of play, but so do Jobs/Employment which is on a clearly different hierarchical level than the first two.
On the other hand, there is a long tail of links that occur on three or fewer sites, suggesting that there are many different potential approaches in building home page navigation and that different universities have different needs and priorities for their home page navigation.
Discovering and addressing those needs is perhaps the biggest challenge in redesign the CSU, Chico home page.
References
Rosenfeld, L. & Morville, P. 2002. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. O'Reilly. 2nd Edition.
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