University web marketing and usability

I actually don’t know when Macquarie University went live with this new part of their web site (I think it was on 4 October 2006), I stumbled upon it about 1 week ago, and thought it might be nice to talk about it after going through most of their contributions. I also do NOT work for Macquarie

MQtv is Macquarie’s answer to the growing demand of future and current higher education students for a better use of multimedia tools on the institution’s web site. I would be very surprised if there was one university out there that doesn’t feel this pressure mounting considerably in the past few months, especially here in Australia. As it seems, instead of trying to disseminate such multimedia content and implementing it all over their site Macquarie University opted for a separate section to present the new material. I think this is a very good concept: the section is clearly dedicated to broadband users, and by keeping it separate, they were able to design it for one specific user stream. I also believe that it might be a lot easier to monitor the development of such a section. Let’s face it, Australia’s tertiary education sector is lagging behind considerably in terms of the use of the full range of multimedia tools and possibilities compared to, for example, the US.
I also think that this “separate” section gives MQtv a special feel that is more easy-going and less administrative (for the lack of a better word) than the rest of their web site. Now to the details:

The name: MQtv

I think the name is not a very good one. I realise that the rationale is to portray this section as some kind of news channel, but “tv” smells old-school to me. And it’s not about a tv, it’s about the web. I wouldn’t be surprised if they call it something else at some point. It reminds me a bit of the German energy giant E.on: the company is the product of a huge merger in the late 90s economy bubble. When asked much later about the strange dot in the name, the CEO admitted that it seemed a good idea at the time…

Home

I think this page works really well. The way the different web items are portrayed puts a clear emphasis on the video footage. The blog is positioned at the right with a significantly smaller space. This works as the blog is actually supporting the video footage, and this becomes immediately clear. I personally probably wouldn’t have put the latest comments of this blog on the splash page, it only pushes down other good content, like the competition, and really doesn’t add much to the page. Also, the podcasts offered at the very bottom look just like videos, and although I am aware that this was intentional, I don’t find it a very good idea. Podcasts often have a different target audience, and they should stand out just as much as the video footage does.

The videos

I think the quality of the videos is excellent! There seems to be a real video team working on that in MQ, and they are doing a fantastic job. The content is very interesting, and the clarity of video and audio is astonishingly good. The way the videos are edited offer them as nice and easily digestible chunks of information. They not only talk about really interesting stuff, they also manage to portray the research culture within MQ quite effectively. Changing camera angles, nice transitions between the interviewees and their work make it very entertaining and pleasant to watch. I just found Margaret Pomeranz’s performance a little over the top, it wouldn’t have been necessary for her to praise the site so much, I think it works for itself… but that’s my personal opinion, hehe.

The podcasts

Again, the quality of these podcasts is striking. The sound quality is crystal-clear, and the content is really interesting. The small thumbnail pictures frame the audio tracks into an easily understandable context, and the overall design of the page is clear and easy to comprehend.

MQ blogs

This is where the site lets users down a little. First of all, it is only one blog, not several. Coming from a page that offers lots of quick snippets of content, the blog entries drag on a little too much (just like my entry here, hehe), and I just didn’t find it such a good read. I am not sure why that is, I assume there might have been no editing of these pieces. Obviously, with the entries being rather on the tedious side, there is not much discussion going on, which diminishes the value of the blog. I would maybe rather portray the entries as some kind of “more information about the video XYZ” than the failed attempt to incite discussion…

About MQtv

A very tedious read with the standard internet-blabla of the common journalists. I wonder why people think that numbers always impress: why do you always need to say how many users use web site such-and-such? We all know that YouTube is popular and many people have MySpace accounts, and reading it at the beginning of almost every internet-related article doesn’t further people’s understanding much more. My opinion: cut it down to the first paragraph, and the last 4 paragraphs, where they actually really talk about MQtv, and not the web in general.

Technical Help

Has to be there, and it is there, so that box can be ticked.

Conclusion

I think MQtv is a really good effort for a tertiary education institution in Australia. The content is great, the presentation is good, and it really makes people want to subscribe to their news feed, or come back for more! The few negative points that I mentioned could be fixed quite easily without touching the overall concept. I just wonder how much it costs to produce all this, but I guess I’m not the one to worry about that

MQ, good job!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 2:44 pm and is filed under General work, higher education marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.