Your website is an important part of your digital toolkit. As the central hub for your communication activities, it ties together all your online communication initiatives. Consider using your website to host your blog, outline your research projects, share research updates, archive your publications, profile yourself and/or your research team, and/or lead virtual conversations. For an example of this, please refer our e-Dialogue platform, Changing the Conversation. Incorporating a striking design, using clear language, and following usability and information design best practices are key to building a successful website. If you are not experienced with web design or do not have the funds to hire a web designer, consider using a pre-designed, more user-friendly content management system (CMS) template as they are typically built to adhere to core web design best practices (i.e. WordPress and Squarespace). It is incredibly important that your website meets accessibility standards and web safe best practices. Therefore, consult W3C web accessibility standards to ensure your website provides equal access and opportunity to diverse audiences.
To track engagement and general website metrics, consider installing Google Analytics on your website. This will provide more in-depth data such as traffic sources, user behaviour, demographic information, and pageview numbers. While built-in website analytics on Squarespace or WordPress are informative, Google Analytics’ customizable interface provides deeper insight on trends.
The design of your website is arguably as important as your content. Since the average user spends less than 15 seconds on a webpage, it must immediately grab their attention and maintain it. Leonardo DaVinci is famously credited with stating that “art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.” This quote still rings true today as your website aesthetics will enhance the communication of your research.
Ensure fonts, font sizes, font colours as well as your website colour palette and contrast meet web accessibility standards. Refer to W3C web accessibility standards.
Make use of images, videos, and embeddable data visualizations to break up the text on your website and to communicate your research in a different way. Describe your images through alt tags to ensure accessibility.
Consider integrating art and high-resolution photographs throughout your website or within the text of your webpages. This will help make your website more aesthetically pleasing and topical to diverse audiences.
Create a logo and other visuals to brand your work. This will help establish identifying symbols and visual consistency online.
Ensure your website uses a consistent and accessible colour palette.
Your website should never take away from your content, rather it should enhance it (think white gallery walls and artworks). Use white space.
Include only high-level text on static pages (i.e. about page). Use hyperlinks or additional webpages to outline more in-depth details.
Ensure your website is responsive (mobile friendly) so it is accessible from a variety of devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones).
Avoid getting caught up with unsustainable design trends. Clean and simple design will stand the test of time.
Many academics worry that simplifying their research outcomes for tweets, blog posts, or short videos can potentially distort or weaken their work. The ‘Skim, Swim, Dive’ framework provides a great content structure to address these concerns. Developed by Charlotte Sexton, the former Digital Media head at The National Gallery in London, UK, information can be structured around the ways different users interact with web content. This user-friendly framework structures web content into three levels of engagement: ‘skim’, ‘swim’, ‘dive’. The goal is to create enticing content that maintains the attention of users while encouraging them to dive deeper into the subject. This helps increase their understanding of your research outcomes while giving them access to additional resources. The application of ‘skim, swim, dive’, however, will vary depending on the type of content. We applied the ‘skim, swim, dive’ framework to our promotional webpages for our biodiversity conversation series.
This level caters to users who prefer high-level information or a synopsis, and simply want to learn the essentials—the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’, and ‘how’.
This level offers additional information that goes beyond a synopsis. This can appear in the form of blog posts, high-level reports, news articles, or videos.
This level offers in-depth information such as peer-reviewed journal articles, detailed research reports, and scientific datasets.
High-level information, such as a description of the conversation series and key connection details while underlining themes, questions, and goals for the event.
A series of hyperlinks that redirected to webpages that featured headshots and bios of panelists, information about our partner organizations, as well as a Living Planet report.
Links to the conversation transcripts, a resource library filled with articles and reports, as well as a final action agenda outlining the findings from the series
This level caters to users who prefer high-level information or a synopsis, and simply want to learn the essentials—the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’, and ‘how’.
High-level information, such as a description of the conversation series and key connection details while underlining themes, questions, and goals for the event.
This level offers additional information that goes beyond a synopsis. This can appear in the form of blog posts, high-level reports, news articles, or videos.
A series of hyperlinks that redirected to webpages that featured headshots and bios of panelists, information about our partner organizations, as well as a Living Planet report.
This level offers in-depth information such as peer-reviewed journal articles, detailed research reports, and scientific datasets.
Links to the conversation transcripts, a resource library filled with articles and reports, as well as a final action agenda outlining the findings from the series
The Ideas, Objects, People museum framework was developed by the Smithsonian Institute in 2010 and is based on visitor studies. It emphasizes the importance of curating audience-centered exhibits that consider the prior experiences and dispositions of visitors. Such considerations ultimately determine the impact exhibits have on visitors. With a goal to offer multiple points of entry, this framework structures content into three content types: ‘ideas’, ‘objects’, and ‘people’. While visitors are naturally drawn to one of the three content types, the goal of this framework is to ‘attract’, ‘engage’, and then ‘flip’ them to another element. Therefore, it is important to reformat your researching outcomes into multiple media types. In addition to curating effective research displays, this framework can be applied to website content and used collaboratively with the ‘skim, swim, dive’ framework.
For visitors who connect to a subject through historic or scientific information (for those who enjoy reading facts and evidence).
For visitors who connect to the materiality of objects (for those who enjoy objects or exploring interactive features).
For visitors who connect to a subject through human stories (for those who want to learn about society).
For visitors who connect to a subject through historic or scientific information (for those who enjoy reading facts and evidence).
Peer-reviewed articles, research reports, and datasets
For visitors who connect to the materiality of objects (for those who enjoy objects or exploring interactive features).
Art, images, videos, data visualizations, maps, and music