www.uwjackson.org - Real Big Marketing

Thank you for requesting an analysis of www.uwjackson.org. We’ve completed our hands on review and here are all the problems, issues and opportunities that we found:

1. No site tracking code installed

This site is not tracking any website traffic. In order to really understand how users are interacting with your website, how many people are visiting and what to focus on for continued improvements it is necessary to incorporate website tracking. A tracking tool will allow you to view reports and statistics about all activity on your site in great detail. There are many different tools for this. We use and recommend Google Analytics which is completely free and easy to install.

Further reading:

Why do I Need Google Analytics?

2. Text embedded in images

Years ago, in order to present users with artistically styled, visually appealing text on web pages it was standard practice to create images, which contained the text and then place those images on a site. Today, advancements in website creation tools and in web browsers provide superior alternatives. Now text can be placed on web pages and then styled to present the same visual end product but without requiring the use of images.

Here are a few reasons why it is NEVER a good idea to embed text inside images:

Text inside images cannot be read by search engines and as a result, no SEO value is added to the page
Images slow down the loading of your site
People with disabilities using devices such as screen readers will not be able to read the text
Visitors on slow connections may be unable to load the images or may simply not see them due to their slower loading times
Text inside images cannot be auto-translated for visitors wishing to view the page in another language
Text inside images cannot be scaled and resized appropriately based on a user’s screen size which means many visitors will struggle to read the text
Updating the text in images requires editing the original image file, uploading it to the site and replacing an existing one which is considerably more maintenance work than just changing the text on the page
Users who increase or decrease the zoom on their browser will see a reduction in quality and readability of the text inside images
Maintaining aesthetic continuity across the site is more difficult when using images where the colors and fonts cannot be easily modified or inherit the styling of the rest of the site
Users cannot select, copy and paste text that is embedded in images

On the uwjackson.org site, text can be found embedded in images in numerous places. This is a critical issue.

Further reading:

3. Mobile usability issues

Your site does feature a responsive design. Good job! This means that the site adapts to the screen size it is being viewed on which is ideal and the standard best practice. However, simply making a site responsive is not enough. It is important to ensure that all visitors to your site are presented with content that is readable and usable, regardless of their screen size.

The uwjackson.org website does get a lot of factors right but there are still a number of usability issues present. Here are just a few worth noting:

As mentioned in #2 above, text used inside of images is problematic. Visitors to this site on small screens will see all the images reduced greatly in size so that any text within them becomes very difficult to read. Were this text separated from an actual image, the size could be preserved and remain readable. This issue occurs in numerous places throughout the site, especially in the header and on the home page.
The home page includes three columns of content plus a sidebar but on small screens, one column and the entire sidebar are hidden from view. This results in users being unable to view that content unless they open the site on a larger screen and also causes the site width to be wider than the screen so users can scroll horizontally and see nothing.
No phone number can be found which is something commonly sought by users on mobile devices.

4. Performance issues

A fast loading site is extremely important these days. Site visitors and search engines expect sites to load quickly and to be able to navigate to subsequent pages without unnecessary wait times. It has been proven that visitors to sites will; visit more pages, interact with more features and even purchase more products on faster sites. In addition, many search engines including Google tend to rank faster loading sites higher in their search results.

The uwjackson.org website is not experiencing serious load time issues but there is significant room for improvement. After all, a site can’t possibly be too fast.

Our tests showed that the website’s load time is 2.73 seconds and its Pingdom score is 96. These numbers are not terrible but could also be greatly improved which would certainly increase engagement site wide.

To facilitate better load times, we would recommend first implementing multiple levels of caching, reducing the number of images, using a CDN and minifying and concatenating scripts and stylesheets to begin with. If you have questions about any of these, please let us know.

Further reading:

5. Home page slider

The home page of your website features a slider / carousel which rotates through a number of pre-defined images. This feature does a nice job of showcasing a few images and messages however it may be worth considering an alternative approach. Our experience and the experience of many other web professionals has been that sliders generally do a poor job of converting visitors, have a low rate of engagement, push more valuable content lower on the page and greatly increase the page load times.

Further reading:

6. Separate volunteer site

The site for volunteer.uwjackson.org is separate from the uwjackson.org website. While there may be valid reasons these sites are handled separately, this does pose several issues worth considering:

The differences between the two sites and the fact that a user will be visiting a different site when clicking on certain links is not communicated and will result in confusion. It is unclear why different sites are used and where to find information, especially when both sites have some information in common.
The SEO value for the content on both sites is reduced as it is spread across multiple domains instead of a single domain (uwjackson.org).
Both sites are using different content management systems which adds complexity for internal staff who wish to maintain the content and increases the difficulty for new team members to learn and help.
Navigating from one site to the other is confusing.

All in all, it is worth considering the fact that having a single site built on the same system would be easier for staff to manage, better for search engine rankings and less confusing for users.

7. WordPress out of date

The uwjackson.org website is powered by WordPress but is currently two major releases behind the latest version of WordPress. Keeping the software that powers your website up to date is the number one way to keep your site secure. We recommend you update immediately all of your plugins, your theme and WordPress and also assign a reminder or a responsible person to periodically ensure that all such software is kept up to date.

Conclusion

Your website is rich in content, has a responsive layout, is built on WordPress and is relatively easy to navigate. However, there are numerous opportunities to improve and a few issues that should be addressed in the short term.

We’d love to discuss these and other topics relating to your site in greater detail with you. If you would like to have a conversation with us to clarify what we’ve outlined above and elaborate further so that you can take action, please don’t hesitate to call or email us:

Phone: (517) 414-2003

Email: kyle@realbigmarketing.com