Development of conceptual website design model for University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

Abstract

University’s website functions as a virtual front door that serves as a critical point of interaction for students, prospective students, alumni, faculty, and the global academic community. Beyond providing information to its community, a university website reflects the institution’s identity and a strategic asset for communication. As the first point of contact for many prospective students and stakeholders, the design, development and functionality of a university website plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions about the institution and influencing decision-making. Despite the increasing reliance on platform for communication, preliminary investigation suggests that many Ghanaian university websites failed usability test and lack modern design standards. Again, there is no conceptual model that guide the design and development of university website. Hence, the study focused on developing a conceptual model that outlines the essential components of effective university website design and test it in the development of prototype website for the University of Education, Winneba. The study employed qualitative descriptive design to describe the experiences of users when interacting with university website and provide a snapshot of the existing selected universities websites. Again, a studio-based research designs was used to produce a prototype UEW website through creative design processes. The research employed the purposive and convenience sampling techniques with a total sample of six websites, two experts and fourteen (14) participants from selected Ghanaian universities. Observations, focus group discussions and interviews were used for data collection. Thematic, visual, and content analysis were employed to analyse data from the field. Findings from the study revealed that many selected Ghanaian universities’ websites fall short in structure, content, accessibility, and modern digital standards. It emerged from the study that many users experience “click fatigue” when locating basic information on university website. Users reported search functionality failures, by returning zero results for programme specific information such as courses description on the university web. The study concluded that the conceptual model developed has proven to be a robust and effective framework for guiding the creation of functional and user-centred university websites. The application of the model was used in developing UniSite WordPress theme and further used to develop a prototype UEW website demonstrated its practical relevance and adaptability. The study recommends the adoption of the proposed conceptual model as a standard guideline for designing Ghanaian university website. Again, web designers and developers should adopt the UniSite WordPress theme for designing university website to reduce time and resources required to design, develop, deploy and maintain the university website due to its functionality and user-friendliness.