People don’t like change, especially on “THEIR” homepage.
The new furniture-inspired metaphorical redesign of the Ohio University’s website caught my attention last week.
I thought it was a “bold” move in terms of web design (graphic-based) and marketing (mainly targeted to high school seniors). According to this follow-up article, written by Meghan Crosby for The Athens NEWS, the redesign might have been too bold for some members of the campus community.
As reported by Crosby, Steven Rubenstein, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at OU, seems to have strong feelings about this change:
“I know that college students think of this place as their home and they’re here for four or five years,” he said. “I’ve been here for eight years, and I’m going to be here far longer so this really is my home. I have colleagues who will try to track me down and who will look for the OU Web site to contact me. I don’t want this to be their first impression of my home.
According to The Athens NEWS article, some current students share the same feelings:
The Post, the student newspaper at OU, on Friday announced that it will protest the design by keeping a daily count on its opinion page of the number of publishing days that the university keeps up its “unprofessional and ugly” front door.
In the meantime, the Ohio University explains the marketing strategy behind this “controversial” homepage in a news release, Bold new Web site caters to prospective students, featured on OU new virtual desktop.
The news release also gives some pointers to help people better adapt to this big change:
Visitors to the site who are not prospective students may feel a bit lost as to where they can find their information. The bar located at the top of the site just below the Ohio University mark provides direct links to pages for various audiences to navigate to Web pages created specifically for groups including current students, alumni, parents and faculty and staff.