Business websites / Higher education
How to Plan a University Website
A university website is a service platform, recruitment tool, research record, and publishing network used by people with very different goals. The plan must simplify those journeys while supporting many accountable content owners.
Start with high-value tasks
Map journeys for prospective undergraduate and postgraduate students, international applicants, parents, researchers, partners, staff, current students, and alumni. Prioritise the tasks with the greatest consequence: finding a course, checking entry requirements, understanding cost and funding, applying, locating a service, or reaching urgent support.
Build navigation around those tasks rather than mirroring the organisational chart. Staff and faculty structures can still be represented, but visitors should not need to know which office owns a process before they can complete it.
Treat course data as structured content
Define one authoritative model for course title, award, mode, campus, duration, intake, entry requirements, fees, modules, accreditation, career context, and application route. Reuse that data across search, comparison, department pages, and campaign landing pages so updates do not create conflicting versions.
Make intake and applicant type explicit wherever requirements or prices differ. Connect course pages to open days, accommodation, funding, student support, and the correct application system without interrupting comparison. Record an effective date for facts that change each academic cycle.
Connect research and institutional proof
Give research themes, institutes, projects, facilities, publications, experts, and partnership routes a coherent structure. A partner should be able to move from a capability to relevant people and a suitable contact without searching separate faculty microsites.
Use approved, contextual evidence for rankings, outcomes, student experience, and impact claims. State the source and period where needed. Distinguish institutional evidence from a single project or department rather than letting marketing copy blur the scope.
Design governance and accessibility in
Assign owners, reviewers, review dates, and archive rules to each content type. Establish shared patterns before enabling distributed teams to publish. The guide to planning information architecture can help retire duplicate sections and preserve durable routes during a redesign.
Test course search, forms, documents, video, keyboard use, screen-reader flow, zoom, and error recovery with representative users. Accessibility cannot be repaired by a final audit alone. Measure completed tasks, failed searches, outdated pages, application handoffs, and support demand to guide ongoing improvements.
Make a complex institution easier to navigate
Need a university website with clearer journeys and stronger governance?
Northform can shape the information architecture, content models, service journeys, and publishing system for a complex institutional website.
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