HESA launches new website

Why have HESA redesigned their website?

Technology and design move at a fast pace and HESA's website had become rather tired and dated. We therefore felt it was time to refresh the layout of the website and to make some key improvements.

All the changes below have been made by our wonderful in-house website team.

Improved homepage design

Large headline news articles that scroll were considered to be of high interest to our visitors. This news area will be regularly updated to keep you up-to-date of latest news.

All photographs featured on the homepage have been taken by members of HESA staff and we hope you agree that they make the website visually appealing.

Simple and clean layout of pages

We have removed the right hand menu list and replaced this with four drop down boxes at the top of the page. We have analysed the main areas of the website and grouped them together under the headings; Products & Statistics, Data Collection, Training & Support and About HESA.

Easier navigation

Within the four drop down boxes we have simplified the listings and renamed some links so that they are more comprehensible to a wide range of users.

Desktop and mobile devices

Our new website has been designed to work well on your iPad, iPhone and other tablets and smartphones.

Headline Statistics

This new homepage feature brings all the data found in our iPhone app to your desktop. Within 3 simple clicks you can find statistics for any higher education institution. We hope easier access to higher education statistics will be useful for our users.

Latest Updates

We have introduced a Latest Updates area on the homepage which is linked to our RSS newsfeed. This section will be updated with any news updates across the whole of our website that do not fit the criteria for our headline news.

Data Collection area

This area has been streamlined and you will notice that the link from the drop down list will take you to the most current collection. Within each page there is a link (under the heading) to previous and future collections within that stream and a link to 'All' should you wish to see the full listing. You will also notice a new icon alongside one year (a small paper graphic): this indicates the latest published data from HESA.

W3C and Accessibility

The new HESA website has been designed with web accessibility in mind and complies with the W3C priority 1 web accessibility guidelines.

The site should be compatible with all popular screen readers, and for those users who require larger fonts please use your browser zoom functionality, on most popular browsers this is Ctrl+.

We are committed to using standards-compliant markup on our website and recommend the use of a standards-compliant browser to view the site, such as Mozilla Firefox, although we have tested the site in many different browsers.

Licensing

This website makes use of the open source Tango icons gallery and other creative commons artwork, licensed under the Creative Commons Share-alike license 2.0.

We also make use of the jQuery javascript library and related plugins, under the GNU/GPL license.

All photography on the website is published with kind permission from members of HESA staff and is under copyright of HESA and may not be copied or reproduced in anyway whatsoever.

Your feedback

We would be keen to hear your feedback on the new website:

• Does it meet the key areas of improvement listed above?
• Do you like the new design and layout?
• Is there anything else you think we could improve upon more?

Please email all comments to Rachel Horsfall, Publishing Manager of HESA.