After the Buckeyes losing, the Steelers winning, and half of a tree now laying in my front yard thanks to Hurricane Ike, I was pleasantly surprised to find this morning that we still do have power at COSI. That won’t keep the meat in my fridge at home from spoiling, but at least I can get a little work done this week (as it would be very difficult to do my job with no electricity).
One of our goals for COSI.org during COSI’s annual cleaning and maintenance shutdown is to rethink our home page. The existing design has worked well for COSI for the past few years, but it’s nature as a graphical “billboard” requires visitors to click past the home page before accessing any depth of information. The number of available rotating content areas (four) really limits the exposure we can offer to the hundreds of things that go on at COSI. The home page also currently does not make the most in-demand content on the site readily available (which happens to be our hours and rates).
We are trying to take these factors into account, as well as rethinking the overall “corporate look” of COSI.org. The home page will be a great place to rethink our web look, with the rest of the site following soon after. I am also experimenting with a way of organizing deeper content on the home page that will help to illustrate how COSI’s many offerings align and advance our strategic areas of focus: Technology & Innovation, Energy & Environment, Health & Medicine, Early Childhood, and Workforce Development.
What would you like to see when you first visit COSI.org? What are some of your favorite web site home pages, and what about them keeps you coming back again and again?