The University of Antwerp website was developed according to the ‘mobile first’ principle.
Some important design principles behind the website
- User-friendliness and user experience are paramount.
- Simplicity and clarity create a striking effect.
- Visual elements stand out.
- Modular: no more fixed templates, but modules that allow you to build a story on one web page.
- The layout is ‘mobile first’ and ensures good proportions and appropriate spacing. The design of the modules creates a clear structure, provides space and helps the editors develop the content in a readable and attractive way.
- Components behave differently depending on the device that the visitor is using to view the page.
- Typography: the basic font should give users a sense of calm and familiarity.
- The new design takes into account the recommendations of Anysurfer, the label for accessible websites. These recommendations cover font size, contrast and use of colour.
Research groups, centres and projects: own subsites
These subsites have their own navigation structures, separate from the central navigation. When it comes to headers, we focus on content, readability and optimal findability in search engines.
Research groups and centres can develop headers on their own subsites with their own signatures:
- The name of the entity appears below the UAntwerp logo, combined with the 'home' icon (= link to subsite homepage).
- Below that is the subsite’s own own navigation menu, title, intro and an appropriate header image.
This way, the header shows what the research group or centre is all about at a glance.
Search engine optimisation
The name, title and intro should be displayed as text elements, not as visual elements. The name of the research group is automatically published in the page title as well. These elements ensure good search engine optimisation.
The logos of the research groups or centres can be published on the web pages themselves. These logos have not been included in the headers because the text is sometimes very long and the logos often have different sizes. That makes them difficult to align in mobile-first design, and the names become too difficult to read. In addition, the text contained in a logo is not indexed, but that’s crucial for search engine optimisation.