Technical – User Experience

User experience (UX) describes the user’s interaction with a website, app, or other digital media. UX focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. It also considers the business goals and objectives of the group managing the site. UX best practices promote improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of Baylor products and related services.

Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need
Usable: Site must be easy to use
Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite
Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities
Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them

Content Evaluation - identify what type of content would be relevant, accurate and effective to the intended audience.
Information-grouping - organizing your content into user-centered, top-level categories.
Standardize content (consistency) - Establish a standard, consistent vocabulary for the site to apply to all site content.
Related links - Create descriptive, useful metadata, “related link” lists and other navigation components that aid in discovery.

Site navigation is the roadmap for the user to find out where they are and where they can go. Just like with any map, if you don’t make it intuitive and easy to understand the user will get lost.

• Directory names should not be unnecessarily long and should make use of relevant words. Recommendations for folder names should use the following:
• Use simple language, no jargon;
• Language should be easily understood and compelling to those seeking its content;
• Contain keywords to help the user see that they’re getting what they want and expect;
• Should match the title of the page which lets the user know what they are about to read. One creates an expectation (URL) and the other delivers on it (Page title/content);
• Should be all lower-case; and
• Should not include spaces or special characters—hyphens are preferred to underscores.

Readability is important to the user experience. Users will scan web pages for a few seconds, looking for key words in headlines and in the first paragraphs before clicking away. One question to keep in mind when creating a page is: How easily can the user understand the written text?

• Text on a page should be text, not an image of text.
• Most important information should be higher on the page.
• Include introductory content that summarizes the page and its purpose
• Break up content with headings (h1, h2, h3 tags) to make the page easier to scan.
• Use bulleted lists or graphics when possible.
• Make sure there is sufficient contrast between text and background color or images.
• Hyperlinks and Calls to Action (CTAs) should be short and clearly marked.

• Use tables only to display tabular data (Don’t use for page content)
• Don’t rely on images for page layout. Use proper HTML and CSS.

• Use concise words for hyperlinks
• Link to nested content or related topics to help with SEO
• Use consistent styling for Links (Color, underline, etc.)
• Links should include title tag.

• Images should have meaningful, descriptive alt tags for accessibility.
• Use only non-copyrighted images. If copyrighted images are used with permission, a photo credit needs to be displayed with the image.
• Image size should be appropriate for use, not stretched or squashed.

• Title - The Title Tag defines the title of the web page. Title tags are used on search engine results pages and are important for both SEO and social sharing.
• Description - The Meta Description should include a concise description of the web page that a searcher will want to click. The description is displayed on search engine result pages to display a preview for the page.
• Keywords - The Meta Keyword tag should not be used as it is no longer is a factor in the Google search algorithm.