Website Critiques, Interested?

[KathieK]

Your website should be designed for your audience - so you need to decide who that is, first thing. Then determine what information you want to communicate to that audience. Then build your website around that content. Concentrate on your content and navigation scheme vs. building a flashy design. The greatest looking website with all the bells and whistles will not impress your audience if they can't find up-to-date content that they are looking for. The website team should include people who can write coherently for the web as well as the designers. Someone needs to be responsible for gathering updated content and keeping it fresh on the site. Have someone (perhaps someone from your school's English department?) proofread your site for grammatical and spelling errors. By all means, write FIRST correctly (it's an acronym) and explain its meaning somewhere on the site. And if you're going to mention the four FIRST programs, be sure to get the titles of the programs correct.

You do not have to design your site to compete for the FRC website award, but... I've judged several FRC Regional Website competitions as well as the Championships last year. It amazes me how many teams submit for that award and do not follow the simple criteria outlined in the manual (Sect. 5, p.12). Another thing often lacking is the name and location of the team on the homepage! Or an easy way for people to contact your team! And while it's nice to know that your team has won several awards over the years, be sure to include the personal stories about how being on a FIRST team has impacted you!