Overview
The following article provides usage guidelines and rationale for limiting the use of rotating & video banners within the Campus Web framework.
Examples
Accepted Use Cases
Top-level campus pages: www.csuchico.edu homepage, /admissions, /wasc. These pages have a high-profile marketing presence, highlight a general campus initiative, and/or address an external audience.
Potential drawback to the use of rotating banners and video banners
Why limit the use of rotating or video banners?
Negative Impact on Accessibility
Moving elements can negatively impact accessibility, especially for those with cognitive and motor impairments.
Slower page load = more likely to leave site
According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
Banner images are the largest files of a website and significantly impact page load time. Rotating banners multiply that effect — which disproportionately affects rural, international, and low-income users without broadband access.
Students May Prefer Text & Photos to Video
A three-year study of teens found that although 3/4 of campus professionals think prospective students want to see videos on the campus website, teens prefer text and photos. (Mythbusting Websites, mStoner & Chegg, 2016).
[NOTE: This may be changing. The “2021 High School E-Expectations Report” by Ruffalo Noel Levitz found that videos are becoming more impactful to prospective students in 2021, when in-person experiences are less available.]
Video Banners Can Interfere With Accessing Content
A video banner attracts attention, which can interfere with access to the rest of the page content, especially if a user has anxiety disorder or an attention deficit. Moving elements on a webpage are very distracting for these users.
Site-wide considerations
It may seem practical to use a rotating banner on an individual site, but if we consider a campus web filled with video banners and rotating banners, it's easy to imagine the use of these items becoming detrimental to the user's overall experience.
Conclusion
The identifiable negative consequences of using rotating banners and video banners outweigh the perceived value these items provide.
Recommendations
Showcase high-quality 1-3 minute videos in the content area of your page. These allow users to opt in to a video experience.
Use videos across all your digital channels, not just on the web
Focus videos on the student experience and highlighting popular programs. Prospective students want to know what it feels like to be at Chico State.
Further discussion and requests
Web Services at Chico State seeks to create & maintain a campus web that serves the campus community, prospective students, and the goals set forth by the University. Our recommendations are with that best interest in mind.
Stakeholder input
In order to validate our ideas and recommendations, we encourage stakeholders to challenge our assumptions and help guide us towards empirically tested insights.
Requests for Rotating Banners or Video Banners
If after reading this article, you or your campus group maintain that a rotating banner or video banner is necessary to achieve your group's objectives, please include the following in your request to Web Services
- URL of the page you'd like to use the rotating banner or video banner on.
- The objective of that page or site.
- The problem you would like to solve with a video banner.