Summer of Siteimprove
With summer in full swing, the start of the fall semester will begin before we know it. Some of us may already be thinking about what we need to be doing and how we need to prepare. For all of our campus web editors, making sure your websites are in good health should be a priority during this time.
With that in mind, we’re kicking off the “Summer of Siteimprove”. Our sites collectively receive millions of page views every year, with many of these visits occurring in the fall. This is why it’s important for all of us to work together and make sure that the websites each of us manage are free from issues that would create a negative experience for our visitors and perhaps lead to a less than ideal impression of the Wake Forest brand.
There are five (5) tasks we’d like every website editor to do on their website this summer:
- Fix all broken links. Let’s get our broken links down to 0. If you haven’t already, go through all your confirmed broken links and links to review in Siteimprove and clean them up. Make sure to check the status of these every month for new issues that may show up.
- Correct any misspellings. If you have misspellings or words to review on your site, let’s correct these. Make sure to add words that are correct to your dictionary so they don’t show up again.
- Bad link labels. If you have any “click here” language on your links, make sure to replace the wording with something that is more descriptive. The language should be share where the user is being sent with the link, for example “WFU Admissions” rather than “click here.” If possible, link within the sentence or bullet to improve readability and concise delivery. (Note: This only applies to webpages. Any news and blog posts from prior months/years do not need to be part of this effort.)
- Alt text. Make sure all images that give meaning to your page have alt text. This is a requirement for digital accessibility and ensures everyone, including those using assistive technology to engage, knows what messages your page is sharing.
- Email address and phone numbers. If you have an email hyperlinked to a person’s name, remove the link, type out the email separately, and link to that instead. (e.g. John Doe, doej@wfu.edu). For phone number consistency, we recommend using the period (e.g. 336.358.5555). However, the most important thing is to make sure all phone numbers are formatted consistently on any page they appear on within your site.
- EXTRA CREDIT: Check for proper headings. Scan your pages to make sure you’re using headings properly. This helps with page readability and overall accessibility. Visitors to your site use headings to help understand how your content is organized. This is especially important to new visitors who are looking at this content for the first time.
We know that this may seem like a daunting task, and that’s why digital and accessibility team members are here to help! If you would like to schedule a time to go over how to do any of these tasks and/or would just like a refresher on how to use Siteimprove, please let us know. You can do so by filling out the form below.
The goal is to have these tasks completed by August 15, 2024, which is right before students arrive on campus and when prospective students really start to view our website looking for information.
As a reminder, the full Siteimprove training guide can be found on the Siteimprove area of this website.