Optimizing University Website: Objectives and Metrics - Free Report

Project Mission, Aims, and Objectives

The first objective for setting up the website is to have an online presence. An online presence gives an organization the ability to be reached by people despite their location. Therefore this will improve the number of people who can access information on Salford University at any time. New requirements have seen businesses have to get an online presence to boost their markets and expand their options in terms of the people they can reach and impact (Wong et al. 2020).

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Websites are also a great source of information for the public. Therefore, the team hopes that by setting up the website, they will have helped save time and other resources that would be needed to acquire information about the university and other related information. For example, the information on the available courses, when the school resumes sessions, the professors and instructors in the school will be provided in the main menu of the school to help those interested in the school to get general information. However, there will also be information that will only be available to the schools that have passwords to access them. Such information will include the courses that one is enrolled in, the fee balances, and examination dates for the courses they are undertaking (Manoor et al. 2012). Therefore, the website is supposed to be a critical source of the dispensation of information that will benefit Salford University members and non-members. Through the website, the professionalism of the school will be seen. A large portion of the market is likely not to consider an organization if they do not have a website.

This is because websites have options for the users of the products offered to rate them, and therefore if one finds the ratings for the website to be terrible, they will forgo the services being offered by the owners of the websites. Websites give an impression of proper and reliable management compared to companies that do not have them since websites show the permanence of the organization and the willingness to be accountable and answerable for their actions whenever the people who use the services give their feedback. Websites are also a cheaper way of advertising the products that one is providing (Krishen 2013). It is comparatively cheaper to advertise the university through its website and online presence than traditional marketing and advertising channels such as the media, which are expensive and need one to pay more for continued advertisement.

The global accessibility of the internet and websites also provides an opening whereby international users may access the university's website and become students here. When people in other nations are looking for universities to study abroad, they rely on the internet for referrals and refer to the ratings to make their decisions. This being so if Salford University establishes a functional website, there is bound to be an increase in international students who will have heard of the university online and joined the school. This will ultimately lead to the achievement of diversity in the university, whereby people from different countries, races, and cultures will meet at the University for Education.

Stakeholder Expectations and Engagement Management

The first expectation from the website is the simplicity and clarity of the website. Websites should be simple to use by all the people interested in them and therefore should be made to be simple enough for use by people who have the basic knowledge of computer and internet use. The simplicity will give the users an easy time looking for the information they are interested in on the website and, therefore, give the users satisfaction from using them (Falk et al. 2005). Simplicity also helps to show the organization's approach towards its customers. The message being sent is open and welcoming, thus increasing the possibility of interested users joining the school on account of their website being useful, attractive, and easy to retrieve information from. There is also an expectation that the website will be responsive to all interested parties who have queries.

The website will have a live chat option, whereby a member of the university's public relations department will be available during working hours to respond to all the questions posed by the visitors of the website. When this happens, the users will be assured of a response to their queries promptly, resulting in the users getting confident in the reliability of the website to their questions, which will give the school a positive review from the users (Bernard 2003). Another expectation of the website is the swiftness in loading. Once the users click on the link to the university's website, the link should redirect them to the site swiftly, therefore helping them to save time and show the professional side of the organization in handling the needs of the customers in terms of quick services and response to the needs of the organization from the customers.

The content on the website is also expected to be readily available, reliable, and up-to-date. The website's content should provide comprehensive information about the university and its different aspects such as its vision, mission, and goals, and provide general information such as the history of the university, the founders, and the current leadership and management team. Additionally, public announcements should be made on the website. Information such as the reporting dates, examination dates, and graduations that the public can inquire about should be provided on the main page of the website. In contrast, other more specific information should be provided on request or through the use of institution-provided passwords and usernames (Ping Zhang 2001). Finally, the website should be affordable to the owners and the users.

The owners should not have to spend too much on acquiring the developers' services for the website since the project is supposed to be affordable to launch and maintain. The maintenance should be affordable to the owners. It should also be well-spaced to ensure that the owners do not spend too much on maintenance instead of undertaking other benefits. The users should find the websites affordable; in that, they should be able to access the website without paying for access as long as they have an internet connection to help them get to the websites. This way, the visitors will be encouraged to visit the website through the availability of free information.

Performance Measurement and Management of Quality

The first way of measuring the website's performance will be to analyze the number of people who visit the website. This is a sure way of knowing the website's reach since it is assumed that every visitor is interested in the organization and its products. An analytics tool will be used to capture every visit to the website. Therefore it will be a sure way of knowing how many people per a given period are interested in the university (Dickinger and Stangl 2013). It will be possible to know whether the audience is growing, dwindling, or constant through the analysis. This can be used to improve the website's quality if the audience shrinks continuously. Secondly, an analysis of the traffic source to the website will enable the university to get a clearer picture of the visitors to the university. Analytics help the organization view information such as the devices used to access the website and the part of the world from where they are accessing the websites.

Whether the visit was from a specific search, a paid per-click link, or from the use of keywords about the university. When this happens, the university will improve its website to meet the specific needs of the people who visit its website, resulting in more traffic in the future. The bounce rates and time spent per session by the visitors will also help measure the website (Plaza 2011). The longer one takes on a website, the likelier they are to be interested in the organization's products. Therefore, the analytics should be reviewed by the website owners to determine their website's effectiveness in terms of the time spent per session by the different users to determine whether they have impacted the clients.

The conversion rates are also another way to measure the effectiveness of the websites. Conversion rates refer to the engagement that the visitors have with the different tools available on the website. For example, if a client sends an inquiry to the website's support, they likely have a genuine interest in the organization. Therefore the website will be considered to have been impactful on them. Similarly, if the visitor prints material from the websites, they can be considered to be interested in the organization to the point of needing offline references to help them go over on the organization (Król and Zdonek 2020).

However, if the session times and bounce rates are high and the visitors do not engage the website in any of the above manners, it is likely that they are not interested in the organization and that the website has failed to convince them otherwise. Therefore, these pointers will help the website's owners determine whether they are effective in their attempts or if they are failing. Finally, the profits and returns of interest are a reliable indicator of the effectiveness of the websites. The effectiveness will be measured by the number of people who will sign up to the university after the setup, the profits that will be achieved, and the time taken for the invested money in the website to be recovered. When this happens, the organization will have full information on whether the website is useful and whether they should keep it or not.

References

Bernard, M.L., 2003, October. Examining user expectations for the location of everyday e-commerce web objects. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 47, No. 11, pp. 1356-1360). Sage, CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Dickinger, A., and Stangl, B., 2013. Website performance and behavioral consequences: A formative measurement approach. Journal of Business Research, 66(6), pp.771-777.

Falk, L.K., Sockel, H., and Chen, K., 2005. E-commerce and consumer's expectations: What makes a website work. Journal of Website Promotion, 1(1), pp.65-75.

Krishen, A.S., 2013. First impressions count: exploring the importance of website categorization—international journal of computer applications in technology, 47(1), pp.32-43.

Król, K., and Zdonek, D., 2020. Aggregated Indices in Website Quality Assessment. Future Internet, 12(4), p.72.

Manzoor, M., Hussain, W., Ahmed, A., and Iqbal, M.J., 2012. The importance of higher education website and its usability. International Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 1(2), pp.150-163.

Ping Zhang, G.M., 2001. User expectations and rankings of quality factors in different web site domains. International journal of electronic commerce, 6(2), pp.9-33.

Plaza, B., 2011. Google Analytics for measuring website performance. Tourism Management, 32(3), pp.477-481.

Wong, E., Leung, R., and Law, R., 2020. Significance of the dimensions and attributes of mobile hotel websites from the perceptions of users. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 21(1), pp.15-37.