WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITE2014 - 2015 Redesign

WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEIntroduction

The West Virginia University (WVU) Libraries’s website encompasses six different libraries, hosts fifty-five different digital and physical collections, offers instruction (through classes, guides, tutorials, instructional resources, research assistance, consultation and literacy initiatives), and provides services with accessibility such as borrowing, computers, copying and printing, database assistance, interlibrary loans, and room reservations.

The WVU Libraries website is defined by its homepage and the following information that is available through the website: the online catalog MountainLynx which provides access to all of the items in WVU Library’s collection; online databases such as Academic Search Complete, Lexis Nexis, and JSTOR, where you can find citations, abstracts and full-text journal articles; online, full-text electronic journals, including titles from Sports Illustrated to the New England Journal of Medicine; services like Electronic Reserves where students can access password protected class materials; and Ask-a-Librarian, where users can chat with a live librarian, send brief factual questions by email, and text a librarian.

INTRODUCTION

WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEIntroduction

THE 33 DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

• 31st Virginia Infantry Regiment Documents• African Americans in the Monticola 1957-

1964• Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station

Bulletins, 1970s-present• Art History Digital Image Database (AHDID)• BBC Theater Collection• Boydell’s Illustrations of the Dramatic Works

of Shakespeare• Center for Research Libraries• Child Ballads of West Virginia• Claude W. Benedum Lectures• David Copperfield• Digitized Books from the Internet Archive• Dr. Edward J. Van Liere Digital Collection• Drawings of David Hunter Strother• Electronic Journals• Electronic Theses and Dissertations• Francis H. Pierpont Civil War Telegram

Series• Government Documents• Grace Edwards Waters: A Devoted Life• History in Photos• International Association for Identification• Isaac Asimov Collection• Jesse Stuart Digital Collection• Mark Twain: Rare Book Digital Collection• MediaSite Audio/Video Streaming• PBS Documentary Collection• Pi Lambda Phi Jewish Studies Lectureship

• Printed Ephemera Collection• School of Art & Design Visiting Artist

Lectures• Season’s Greetings: Holiday Cards Collection• Shakespeare Online Collection• Storer College: A Digital Photographic

Collection• Theses and Dissertations• West Virginia History OnView: Historical

Photographs THE 8 LIBRARY WEBSITES

• Downtown Campus Library• Evansdale Library• Health Sciences Library• Law Library *• West Virginia and Regional History Center

and Special Collections• Charleston Health Sciences Library *• Vining Library (West Virginia University

Institute of Technology) *• Mary F. Shipper Library (Potomac State

College) * * Not maintained by WVU Libraries

RESOURCES AND WEB APPLICATIONS

• Databases• MountainLynx Catalog• Electronic Journals• Libraries Hours• Services• Staff• Electronic Reserves• Room Reservations• Reference Online• EZ-Search

INTRODUCTION

WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEGoals and Outcomes

To redesign the WVU Libraries website and digital reserves into a responsive website design that works across all various desktop and mobile devices, browsers, and platforms through progressive enhancement, HTML5, CSS3/CSS preprocessors, and JavaScript powered by the EngineCMS content management system and the Hydra technology framework.

To establish a successful design hierarchy and user interface with the WVU Libraries website going forward for WVU, WVU Libraries, and individual Libraries utilizing WVU University Relations’ branding, color pallet, favicons, typographic elements, and patterns.

To better exhibit WVU Libraries student engagement, community enhancement, and excellence in research, creativity, and innovation through the WVU Libraries website, digital reserves, and related web application.

To achieve these three goals the 6-part strategy will be to make a responsive website, research using qualitative, quantitative, and visual research, define the WVU Libraries’ target audience, create user scenarios, design heir achy, and employ content strategy .

GOALS AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES

WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

BUILD RESPONSIVE WITH PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT

In designing the WVU Libraries website we will be starting with a progressively enhanced, mobile-first design and build upwards, enhancing it with the right elements of the existing digital presence where appropriate. This will allow for accessibility and enable the website to render the same across all of the current popular browsers – Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and webkit - and degrade gracefully on older browsers through HTML5 splints and JQuery libraries such as Selectivisr and Respond.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Figure 1 StatCounter Global Stats. Jan. - Aug. 2014. http://gs.statcounter.com/

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

FORMULATE A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A research methodology will inform the overall design of the WVU Libraries website through qualitative research, quantitative research, and visual research as well as defining our target audience, geographic scope, and allowing us to create user scenarios.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Qualitative Research

The primary resource of Qualitative Research is the 2010 Website Survey Results and the 2014 Qualitative Research Survey, totaling over 1,450 responses from students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. These survey mechanisms focus on capturing and updating our target audience, mobility, and user scenarios.

Quantitative Research

Using server website statistics combined with heat map and scroll map reports from Crazy Egg, we can determine the following about the WVU Libraries website:

• In order of popularity, the top five most utilized resources on the homepage are:

• Databases• Electronic Journals• Catalog• Library Information• Interlibrary Loans

• At the beginning of the Spring 2014 semester:

• there were a total of 93,002 website visits• 50% or more of website visits were from

off-campus

• In order of popularity the top five referrals are coming from:

• direct website traffic to libraries.wvu.edu• the Google search engine• West Virginia University’s main website• the Bing search engine• mix.wvu.edu

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

FORMULATE A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

By starting with the 125 library websites in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and cross-referencing that list against the library members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI), LYRASIS, West Virginia University’s Big 12 peers, West Virginia University’s HEPC peers, and West Virginia University’s destination peers, we can determine the following:

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Content & Visual Research

Both of these content and design trajectories set a baseline for where we at least need to be, and what our goals should be to surpass, for redesigning the WVU Libraries website in regards to content strategy, design, and usability.

Peer Trajectory for Design

• Harold B. Lee Library | Brigham Young University

• University of Tennessee (Knoxville) Libraries • Walter Royal Davis Library | University of

North Carolina (Chapel Hill)• Howard-Tilton Memorial Library | Tulane

University Library• River Campus Libraries | University of

Rochester• University of British Columbia Library• Jean and Alexander Heard Library |

Vanderbilt University• Cornell University Library• University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries• York University Libraries• Pennsylvania State University Libraries

Peer Trajectory for Content

• University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Library• Iowa State University Library• University of Kansas Libraries• University of Missouri–Columbia Libraries• University of New Mexico Libraries• University of Oklahoma Libraries• Oklahoma State University Library• Rutgers University Libraries• University of Texas Libraries• Texas A&M University Libraries• Texas Tech University Libraries• University of Utah Library

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

DEFINE A TARGET AUDIENCE & GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE

According to the 2013 College Portraits, about.wvu.edu, the WVU Office of Graduate Education & Life, and the 2010 and 2014 website survey results and Crazy Egg reports of 1,137 responses, undergraduate students in the United States of America with a high-speed cable/broadband connection, and a Windows operating system, used the Firefox Internet browser to visit the Libraries web site weekly during the Fall 2010 Semester.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Primary Target Audience (73% / 107,062 students per month)

WVU undergraduate students who are 48% female or 52% male, are primarily Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, or Asian in ethnicity, are United States citizens or are international students, are 21 years in their average age, and are 49% from the state of West Virginia or 51% from other United States, territories, or countries.

Secondary Target Audience (19% / 27,865 students per month)

WVU graduate students who 41% male or 59% female, are 83% US citizens, 14% non-immigrants mostly from India or the People’s Republic of China, and are 31 years in their average age.

Tertiary Target Audience (8% / 11,733 students per month)

WVU administration, faculty, staff, and Morgantown, West Virginia community members.

Numbers are populated by looking at both survey polls and server statistics from October 2013.

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

CREATE USER SCENARIOS

The primary target audience accesses the WVU Libraries website from on or off campus and has no trouble connecting to databases or electronic journals from off-campus. They come to the web page to use (in descending order):

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

• Databases• MountainLynx Catalog• Electronic Journals• Libraries Hours• Services• Staff• Electronic Reserves• Reference Online• EZ-Search

The primary target audience finds what they are looking for on the website most of the time, but if/when they are frustrated, it is because they feel there are too many layers to navigate through to locate needed information.

According to the 2010 Website Survey Results Report of 1,137 responses, 69.9% of visitors found what they were looking for most off the time, and only 17% of students do find what they are looking for every time; conversely, desktop and mobile users don’t expect to read an instruction manual, and so brief prompts are fine as are service-specific explanations, but relying on FAQs is a failure of user experience.

Also, the 2010 Website Survey Results Report of 1,137 responses exhibits that 45.3% of users feel that there are too many layers of navigation required to locate needed information, and 18.3% of users find the organization of the webpages confusing.

TechSmith Morae is a long-term solution that is an entire usability testing lab in a box, and enables the WVU Libraries to make the usability tests, capture on-screen and user videos, find the participants, and administer the testing all in-house for various websites, web applications, and digital collections.

?

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

DESIGN HIERARCHY

Design isn’t about making something pretty, although that’s part of it. Design is largely about function. It’s about making an interface work so well that the user never stumbles. Much of a good user interface depends on a notion called visual hierarchy.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

Successful design hierarchy is present in a lot of websites that are part of a larger umbrella of organization, as well as having many subsites for different affiliate, departments, entities, organizations, and units.

A successful example of design hierarchy at West Virginia University is the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, which has over thirty different departments, and the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center which encompass five different schools, and many affiliates, centers, departments, and offices.

Visual hierarchy is one of the most important principles behind effective web design. Certain parts of any website are more important than others (forms, calls to action, values, etc.).

Where do you want the user to click?

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEStrategy

EMPLOY CONTENT STRATEGY

The future is flexible, and we’re bending with it. From responsive web design to future-friendly thinking, we’re moving quickly toward a web that’s more fluid, less fixed, and more easily accessed on a multitude of devices. As we embrace this shift, we need to relinquish control of our content as well, setting it free from the boundaries of a traditional webpage to flow as needed through varied displays and contexts.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

What doesn’t work:

• Jargon and rules aren’t everything and mean nothing to SMEs

• Further dividing clients/SMEs from web developers … everyone is content, and content is everywhere.

• Territorial-ism, and making web work exist separate from content as if it is too special.

• Deliverables; they won’t fix content problems What does work:

• Content as a team effort.• Embracing workshop opportunities, not just

for a kickoff.

The Content Strategy Parallel Process:

Creating a boilerplate for content providers to populate is a step in the right direction, but content development and strategy should be a parallel process between SME (subject matter experts) and web developers.

Content development and strategy should be a parallel process; seeing content as ‘input’ is only half of the battle… content is also the output of an organization’s web presence.

The Content Strategy Goal:

• Establish Messaging – what do we want to say/what is important?

• Establish Editorial Style – does your current content sound like what you want to Message

• Content Auditing – go through it together• Content Modeling – how is it structured,

interconnected; do journey-mapping• Future-Ready Content

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WVU LIBRARIES WEBSITEProposed Changes

Branding

The new WVU Libraries website and sub-sites should utilize the official WVU favicon, header, and footer.

Domains

The WVU Libraries’ content and design peers use the following naming conventions:

• lib.school.edu• library.school.edu• libraries.school.edu

The largest percentage of our web applications and services live at the lib.wvu.edu domain, and the website is the only exception, so moving the website domain to resolve at lib.wvu.edu is preferable. Also, m.library.wvu.edu will resolve there too since the desktop and mobile website will be the one in the same.

Events

Using WVU’s Calendar for all event postings, and allowing every LWVU Library employee to submit events.

Homepage

A dynamic search box that better meets the needs of our audience, and Google search capability of the website in the same box.

Role-based content being delivered to the following audiences on the website homepage:

• Undergraduate Students• Graduate Students• Librarians• Faculty & Staff• Visitors

Social Media

• Acknowledging Instagram • Embracing Google+• Multiple Tweeters • One Facebook Page• Update Wikipedia• YouTube

Third-Party Software

The new WVU Libraries website should utilize Google Analytics to contribute to WVU Analytics, to allow us to perform Demographic/Pathway Mapping, and take advantage of Universal Analytics.

The website should also take advantage of SiteImprove, a free WVU spell-checking, broken link, and accessibility tool for continual website maintenance.

PROPOSED CHANGES

And again...

WVRHC WEBSITEResearch

WVRHC RESEARCH Content Research

The following websites were used for navigation and structural content inspiration:

• The Bentley Historical Library at University of Michigan

• The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley• USC’s South Caroliniana Library• University of Wyoming’s American Heritage

Center• The University of Texas Harry Ransom

Center• The University of Texas Briscoe Center for

American History

Visual Research

The following websites were used for design inspiration:

• The Virginia Historical Society• The Smithsonian Institution Archives• University of Missouri Libraries Special

Collections & Rare Books• The Art Institute of Chicago• The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Qualitative Research

Using Qualtrics to conduct a website survey we determined the following:

• 31% Alumni, 24% Student, 24% Faculty, 17% not WVU affiliated, and 3% Staff are your audience

• 83% of the website visitors use Social Media (Facebook 92%, YouTube 63%, Twitter 46%, Pinterest 42%, Google+ 38%, Instagram 38%)

• 45% of the website visitors have not heard of and haven’t attended the West Virginia Day events.

• The top 6 things people are looking for are Archives & Manuscripts, Newspapers, OnView, Ancestry.com, Oral History, and Research Guides

• The website’s lowest ratings are for a clear path to information, general ease of use, clarity and relevance of navigation items, and the amount of content being too small

Quantitative Research

Using server analytics from wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/ we determined the following:

• The most popularly visited internal resources are Census Records, Folk Music Recording, Genealogical Research, Military Records, and Public Records

• Traffic totals for 2014 on average equal 39,332 visits to view 577,272 pages a month

• 2014 Highest Months: • February: 90,271 visits of 407,643 pages

were for West Virginia History OnView• October: 8,364 visits of 48,989 pages

were for the Archives & Manuscripts Collection

• The most popular pages in general are public records, history, folk music, copy, collections, explore, census, and guides

• In the month of September, 2014 alone there were 107,970 page views on mobile devices

WVRHC WEBSITEProposed Changes

WVRHC PROPOSED CHANGES

Content Audit

The Web Team suggest that a website-wide content audit is performed that:

• Eliminates extraneous content• Develops a meta description of 155

characters• Identifies missing content and information…

• Mission statement • Goals• Clearer purpose

• Helps search engine optimization• Develops a content style guide that…

• uses an active voice• avoids duplication• is gender-neutral

Events & Social Media

The WVRHC should consider:

• Adding events to the WVU Calendar• Starting to use social media for your visitors

to…• use Facebook, the largest social media

that your visitors are already using, as soon as possible

• https://www.facebook.com/pages/West-Virginia-and-Regional-History-Center/132560236781576

• interact with images, such as the University of Oklahoma History of Science Collections

• Connecting with local history organizations to cross-promote events and news such as…

• The Marion County Historical Society• The Morgantown history Museum

• Updating the Wikipedia page at…• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_

Virginia_and_Regional_History_Center

Homepage & Navigation

The following are suggestions for the WVRHC website restructure:

• Add the official WVU Header and Footer• Add the a WVU Libraries Header• Transition the 4-part navigation into a 3-part

‘call-to-action’ quick link section• Implement a navigation similar to identified

content peers• Utilize a search bar that makes sense to

visitors as opposed to WVRHC staff• Highlight WVRHC collections through large

image features and text on homepage• Add ‘do-it-yourself’ icon links for patrons to

internal resources on homepage• Reduce the amount of focus on the

homepage for immediate redirects to other websites

• Add a ‘Stay Connected’ section that engages visitors with ways to connect to the WVRHC

• Highlight WVRHC-specific news and social media on the homepage

So, then what happened...

WVU & WVRHC WEBSITEWireframes

WIREFRAMES WVU Libraries

Based on qualitative and quantitative research, digital wireframes were constructed to:

• align the website with WVU’s branding• better exhibit WVU Libraries student

engagement, community enhancement, and excellence

• provide robust search options on the WVU Libraries’ website homepage

• serve the information in an order prioritized by our target audience’s needs

• take advantage of scrolling• utilize verbiage that makes since to our

target audience

http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/library.pdf

Specific Libraries

Based on qualitative and quantitative research, digital wireframes were constructed to:

• feature exhibitions, collections, or events of the specific library

• focus attention on the specific library, allowing content development to occur by local librarians

• prioritize content as needed by specific library website users

• serve information to specific library website visitor needs

http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/evansdale.pdf

WVRHC

Based on qualitative and quantitative research, digital wireframes were constructed to:

• draw attention to internal WVRHC features that are highly sought after

• employ calls-to-action to engage website traffic

• prioritize resources that are internal to the WVRHC website

• restructure navigation to make more practical sense to patrons

http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/images/wvrhc.pdf

And, now...

WVU & WVRHC WEBSITEDesigns

DESIGNS http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/index.html

http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/backpage.html

http://testing.lib.wvu.edu/2015/wvrhc.html

Going forward... simultaneously!