As I was going through my morning routine today, I was wondering if the gym would be open during the winter session. Busily poking at my tofu scramble with my right hand, I grabbed my phone with my left and asked Siri "Is the CSUMB Gym open today?" Siri couldn't tell me, but she did have suggestions for other gyms in the local area. While our gym doesn't live or die based on people asking Siri if it's open or closed, there are plenty of other services that we as a campus want casual searchers to find. Questions like "What plays are happening tonight?" or even "When is the library open?" are very important to our users, and the World Theatre or Library staff probably think they are important too.
In the past three years since our last web re-design, the landscape of the types of software and hardware being used to access the web has changed dramatically, and Siri is a good example of that shift. Over 60% of all traffic on the internet this last year were services like Google or Siri trying to process the web, and we are working on tools in the new campus website to help users build complicated things like opening hours or contact information in a way that these services can parse correctly.
Mobile adoption in the market and on campus has skyrocketed. Just take a look at the kinds of devices found on our wireless network at a normal day in the semester:
Mobile devices are 64% of wireless devices on campus
So between 60% of traffic being bots, and 60% of that on campus being mobile, that makes only 24% of our potential users people using computers. The traditional computer, however, is shifting too. Newer computer users almost never have Microsoft Office installed, and the Chromebook (a stripped-down computer with just a web browser) has recently surpassed Apple in laptop sales. If your website is an assemblage of PDF and Word documents, the number of users who can access them is shrinking.
The web team on campus is thinking about all these challenges as we approach the content-creation process for our users, and we'll have early access to play with these tools as soon as we can get them ready. All these sea changes in users and technology means, however, that our content will need to adapt as well. Completing a content audit is the first step to moving your content, but we're excited about what else you'll be able to create in the months to come.
In the past three years since our last web re-design, the landscape of the types of software and hardware being used to access the web has changed dramatically, and Siri is a good example of that shift. Over 60% of all traffic on the internet this last year were services like Google or Siri trying to process the web, and we are working on tools in the new campus website to help users build complicated things like opening hours or contact information in a way that these services can parse correctly.
Mobile adoption in the market and on campus has skyrocketed. Just take a look at the kinds of devices found on our wireless network at a normal day in the semester:
So between 60% of traffic being bots, and 60% of that on campus being mobile, that makes only 24% of our potential users people using computers. The traditional computer, however, is shifting too. Newer computer users almost never have Microsoft Office installed, and the Chromebook (a stripped-down computer with just a web browser) has recently surpassed Apple in laptop sales. If your website is an assemblage of PDF and Word documents, the number of users who can access them is shrinking.
The web team on campus is thinking about all these challenges as we approach the content-creation process for our users, and we'll have early access to play with these tools as soon as we can get them ready. All these sea changes in users and technology means, however, that our content will need to adapt as well. Completing a content audit is the first step to moving your content, but we're excited about what else you'll be able to create in the months to come.
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