A Quick Guide to… Introductions

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The latest in our series of Quick Guides, here’s a reminder of best practice for:

Introductions

We have a simple three point guideline for writing introductions for the web. Introductions should:

  • have fewer than 50 words
  • be a summary of the page’s main point
  • include keywords to support search engine optimisation

We’ve recently been talking about reducing the word limit even further. Could you explain what a page is for in 30 words?

Consider it from the point of view of different devices – whereas a 50 word intro can look roomy on a huge desktop screen, it suddenly becomes very cosy when seen on a mobile.

Keep it simple, and keep it to the point. There’s nothing more annoying than having to read halfway down a page to find out that you’ve been looking at irrelevant content.

How Compression Can Increase User Satisfaction

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Linking to documents that provide more information is vital for responsive design websites.

Let’s face it – no-one wants to read all your content for a specific topic on a single web page, or an endless number of web pages, on a mobile screen.

Having a 70-page research report or the terms and conditions of applying for a job as a downloadable PDF is sensible.

But what happens if that document is 15MB in size? First of all, you won’t get it in the university’s new content management system – it has an 8MB limit.

Even then, someone downloading 8MB on a 3G phone is going to be waiting a while to see it. They’ll also be eating into their data allowance at an alarming rate if they have a few of these to download.

Smaller is better

Making the file size of your documents smaller is key to improving your users’ experiences.

Compression can reduce the time documents need to load and cut the cost for those using mobile data.

Not everyone has access to Adobe Acrobat and its PDF resizing capabilities due to the cost. But there are free tools online to solve this issue; one of the best I’ve found is Smallpdf.

You can drag and drop your document from your computer onto its Compress PDF screen and it’ll do the rest. Then simply download the result for your website.

I’ve seen it take documents of 17MB and reduce them to 600KB, a much more palatable size for users. And there’s no loss of quality.

Even if you think your document is small enough not to bother with this, do it anyway. Every little helps with page loading speed and aiding user experience.

Smallpdf also provides many other PDF manipulation services that could prove helpful to you.

Make it easier for your users to access your documents and there’s every chance they will.

Team update: 29 March – 8 April 2016

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Find out what we’ve been up to, and what’s coming up.

Go Mobile programme

Linda’s been getting the Clearing site migration under way – the site has been migrated into T4 and is undergoing a post-migration check.

The alumni site is gearing up for go live on the 20 April – we’re running final checks and adding final content.

Linda’s set up a process to manage the content work coming through Go Mobile – using a combination and of technology (Trello) and Blue Peter (pin board, sticky tape and post its) – we’ll get this programme cracked!

Careers websites

Jane has project managed the Go Mobile process for the huge Careers website – and it’s finally on the last leg. Fair to say this one has been… ‘tricky’. She might need a lie down now.

It was so big, we’ve created four new, audience-focused websites:

• Careers Service
• Careers Occupations (information site)
• Employers
• Staff (internal)

The new Employers website went live on Monday 4 April, and both the Careers Service and Careers Occupations will go live on Wednesday 13 April.

Andrew is continuing to populate the Careers Occupations site, which is substantial. He’s certainly finding out a lot about the different kind of jobs you can get. He’s still very happy with being a web content officer – so no career change imminent.

Jane and Lisa finalised the post-migration work on the Careers Service site and handed over the final sections to editors. Jane is also organising some extra editorial and T4 training for Careers staff.

Lisa is also helping populate the Careers Occupations site, and is writing some handover notes for managing events on the Careers site after it goes live.

Emily is proof reading the Careers Occupations website, while Emma C is proof reading the Careers Service website – phew!!! All ready for go live next week.

Campaigns and other developments

Emma C is reviewing our editorial style guide with a view to making it more accessible and easy to use.

Andrew wrote a blog post with tips on how to avoid broken links on your site, and Jane added a quick guide to lists. Lisa wrote this month’s newsletter for the blog.

Training and support

Linda ran a media training session.

We’ve received 41 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 19 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

There’s induction planning for another content officer starting with us on the 25 April.

We’ve got another round of Planning and Writing Web Content workshops coming up, as well as a session on T4 Basics.

A Quick Guide to… Lists

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To help you keep track of the standards we use online – welcome to our quick guide to:

Lists

We like the use of lists online, they help you to break up large blocks of text on pages, by introducing white space. They also make your content instantly easy to understand, as they are quicker to scan read.

You can choose between bulleted and numbered lists. Here are the rules for each type of list.

Bulleted Lists

For most pages we’d recommend using bulleted lists. Make sure that you:

  • follow on from a colon
  • start each point with a lowercase letter
  • don’t add punctuation at the end of a bullet point (or at the end of the list)
  • use a minimum of three bullets but no more than six
  • begin with keywords and use bold for emphasis
  • keep each point short (not full sentences) – aim for up to 10 words

Numbered Lists

Numbered lists are recommended to use only when you want to guide a user through steps or a ‘top 5’.

  1. They don’t need to follow from a colon.
  2. Start each step with a capital letter.
  3. End each step with a full stop – each step should be a complete sentence.

Next time we’ll be covering introductions.

Team Update: 14 – 24 March 2016

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Go Mobile programme

We’ve welcomed two Content Officers to the team to support our work on the Go Mobile programme. The whole team is involved in their induction, getting them up to speed with our systems and processes.

Meet Emily

I’ve been busy getting to grips with all the systems, processes and information I’ll need here in the CWD team. It’s only been a week and a half, but I’ve had a great time getting to know the team, what they all do, and where Andrew and I will fit in. Onwards to the next week!

Meet Andrew

I, too, have been trying to ease my feet under the table. The wonderful welcome and induction the team has delivered really has helped get Emily and I started. I’m working on the new career resources website, which is something I can really get my teeth into.

Emma C completed an audit of the Clearing website.

Linda has been finalising the go live schedule for the Alumni and Giving website.

The new site for the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering has just gone live.

Jane and Lisa handed over most sections of the Careers Website to editors last week, and are working through final sections.

Design and Technical developments

Andy has completed a set of photo audits for sites about to go through Go Mobile. He has reviewed assets in the University photo library to make sure we’ve got enough high quality images to use in the new template.

The Tech Team have been doing some housekeeping by optimising JavaScript and CSS to improve page performance.

Campaigns and other developments

Emma C worked with members of Marketing and Student Recruitment to produce an offer guide for taught postgraduate students.

Training and support

Jane and Lisa ran a fully subscribed Planning and Writing web Content session. We had attendees responsible for websites including Accommodation, the School of Biology and Online Events. Anne ran another T4 CMS Basics session, and Contribute workshop.

We’ve received 34 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 16 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

The content team are beginning to audit the next batch of sites to go through Go Mobile. We’ll also continue working alongside editors from Careers to get their new sites ready for go live.

And there’s quite a bit of holiday in the team over the school holidays. Destinations include Tennessee, New York, Palma and… Peterborough.