Designing for the User

Bucknell University’s recent redesign of their home page.

Bucknell University sought to break out of the conventional higher education website approach and deliver something new.

Simplify Choices

Landing pages are extremely important, especially when it comes to college or university websites. When done right, users can find exactly what they’re looking for quickly and easily. This is imperative for high conversion rates. If the site is cluttered with endless links and tabs then users will ultimately get lost and leave.

There’s a UX ‘rule’ called the 3-click rule that states if anything takes more than three clicks, it’s considered bad UX. Therefore, designers should create the navigation and site architecture so that users can access whatever they need in 3 clicks or less.

The Bad

When accessing other college sites I’ve noticed that there are several navigation tabs with endless links within each tab. It takes me several ‘hovers’ and clicks to find the right tab or link that I want.

Below are a few examples. I’ve highlighted all navigation tabs in blue.

The Good

As you can see, there are plenty of places for the user to get confused. It’s hard to find a college website that doesn’t have at least three menu bars with drop downs (trust me I’ve looked). I understand that there is a lot of content that needs to be displayed but it doesn’t have to be shown all at once. That is why I think Bucknell did a masterful job redesigning their website. Their site guides the user exactly where they want to go. It feels like more of a conversation than a witch hunt.

Below is Bucknell University’s landing page.

It is clean and simple compared to the other sites we’ve seen so far. Bucknell only needs one navigation tab used to display the essentials and they even allow for customization (highlighted in yellow).

As a user, you are able to show or hide any panel that doesn’t interest to you. This is an amazing feature that no other school I’ve come across has implemented. Bucknell’s forward-thinking creates a unique and personal experience that in the end, increased their conversion rate by 39%.

I hope you enjoyed this article and challenge you to check out these sites for yourself. See if you can find the course catalog in 3 clicks or less!