How London Metropolitan University Maximised Website Usability with Funnelback Search
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The Organisation: A Large, Diverse University
London Metropolitan University is one of the foremost providers of undergraduate, postgraduate, professional and vocational education and training in Britain. Formed in 2002, by the amalgamation of two universities - the 'University of North London' and 'London Guildhall University' - it is one of the most diverse universities in the UK with around 30,000 students from over 150 countries.
The Challenge: Maximising Site Usability
London Metropolitan University, like most universities operating in the current economic climate, faces fierce competition to attract students to its courses. The recent Government cuts, and subsequent tuition fee rises, have meant the challenge of attracting new students is more difficult than it has ever been. The University website has a huge role to play in helping to meet this challenge, especially as it is the website that is so often the first port of call for prospective students.
The University recently undertook a wide ranging programme to refresh their web presence, focusing on making the most of their existing investment by improving the look and feel of the University website, making it more informative and maximising its usability. Improving the accessibility of course information, by making it easier to find, was a primary aim of the project. The existing search was not returning the right course information, and furthermore, the search results page was difficult to understand and navigate because there were no tools to refine the results, to amend the search query, or to ease the task of sifting through the information returned.
The Project Manager at London Metropolitan University, Ashraf Girgis, describes the search problems as two fold:
"Firstly, the core search results were not what users were expecting to see. The likes of Google and Bing have raised expectations, and our site search was outdated by comparison. Secondly, course information was not receiving special attention in the search results. The information, if returned at all, did not stand out to users."
The Solution: Promoting Course Information
The University evaluated several products before selecting Funnelback search. Ashraf describes how they came to choose Funnelback:
"It was clear from the outset that the Funnelback team best understood our business requirements. Their background in higher education impressed us - it was clearly a sector they knew well. This was demonstrated by how quickly they understood the problem we were trying to solve."
As well as the brand new search engine, the solution includes a new search results page design. A major new feature of the search results page is the contextual "Course Finder" which highlights relevant courses at the top of the search results. This component was a joint idea between the Funnelback and London Metropolitan project teams, and was developed to fulfill two of the core requirements of the project; making course information easy to find and promoting courses to prospective students. The course finder was implemented using Funnelback's "Best Bets" functionality with minimal additional customisation and styling.
The new search results page allows users to refine the returned results using the dynamically generated Contextual Navigation; a standard feature of Funnelback Search that automatically creates sub-categories of the results without requiring metadata. The project also uses Faceted Search to differentiate results from the public website and the University's Intranet. The Intranet results are only displayed if the user is searching from within the University's network, ensuring that only relevant results are shown to the user. As well as providing these features to aid navigation of the search results, Funnelback also uses behavioural learning to improve the search rankings over time, based on which items users click on.
The project included training for the University's web team to enable them to effectively manage and administer the search themselves. Funnelback has a user-friendly administrative interface which allows administrators to adjust the styling of the results, change the settings for Best Bets, set up synonyms and much more. The reporting module is particularly flexible, enabling administrators to understand exactly what users are searching for, what results are being returned, and how the system is performing overall. Ashraf commented:
"The reports are very good, particularly in highlighting to us the specific keywords used. The admin interface is very easy to use, with a clean simple interface. Managing the system on our own has proved to be very simple indeed."
The Result: Significantly Better Results
The new search tool has been a huge success, with anecdotal evidence from users suggesting a much improved experience and significantly better results. The results now service the different users effectively by giving them the tools they need to refine results. The Course Finder in particular seems to be proving to be a big hit, and hopes are high that, as the volume of prospective students visiting the site increases over June and July, it will continue to prove its worth. Project manager, Ashraf Girgis, is pleased with how the project went:
"Overall we are extremely happy with the project. The Funnelback team where friendly and easy to work with, and we worked together collaboratively very well. They are clearly experts with the technology, and were able to answer our questions quickly and knowledgeably."
Further to the immediate benefits of this project, the University feel they have invested in technology that will allow them to incorporate new functionality quickly and easily in the future, something Ashraf has in mind:
"We are already thinking about expanding our use of Funnelback into other areas, such as our internal Intranet and file share systems. We feel we have invested in a product for the future, not just something to fix a specific short-term problem."
Visit the London Metropolitan University website to see Funnelback Search in action
