Website: Northern Kentucky University, Greater Cincinnati Region

The Office of Marketing & Communications is responsible for the design and production of the official university website templates, navigational flow and end-customer user experience. We are brand ambassadors who tell the university story via the web interface.

We also work with campus clients to offer on-demand web development services and web-editor troubleshooting as our production schedule and strategic priorities allow.

Request web development

The official NKU website is a powerful tool connecting Northern Kentucky University to its students, faculty, staff, alumni and community. The web presents a significant opportunity to engage with NKU’s community in a meaningful way and to reinforce the NKU brand.

Here’s a short checklist to help plan your web:

Confirm who will be in charge of web maintenance and have that web-editor obtain the proper training
Identify your audience, goals and resources
Establish the goal of the site, what you want the audience to do
Develop a content strategy, make an outline of content to help with navigation
Follow accessibility guidelines for web development
Create a maintenance plan, set up reminders to review pages and documents every 6 months to assure accuracy and compliance

Guidelines

Do use spell-check on all text components

Do use column controls to better manage your content design and layout

Do include ALT text to all images - learn more about web accessibility

DO include navigation on every page

DO use properly nested heading tags throughout the page (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.) - learn more about web accessibility

DO adhere to brand standards in support of a consistent, unified voice of the university.

DON’T delete a page without deactivating it first

DON’T delete an NKU Title component from the page or have multiple components on the page. This is essentially the H1 tag and should be limited to one. If the element needs to be hidden, please use the “hide visually” class.

Don't use an empty text area to add vertical space to a page. Consider using a horizontal rule to separate content or put items into a column control to add spacing

DON’T upload images to a page directly from the image component

DON’T remove the left navigation menu or place other components in the left navigation column

Best Practices

Avoid overusing acronyms – do not assume your audience knows what you mean.
Make an effort to exercise Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in your site’s text and image selection.
- DEI extends to people of all abilities and identities
Break up long sections of text into multiple text components.
- This will ease any future editing and increase page-load speeds
Avoid multiple panel groups on a single page (more than 3).
- If you must include many panel groups, create multiple reference pages that contain small clusters of panel groups
If you have content that is included on multiple pages (tables, text, etc.) place that content on a reference page.
- Any edits will only need to be made once
- Content will be consistent
- This will reduce spelling errors, broken links and other content issues
Use descriptive text for all links.
- Do: visit us at Northern Kentucky University!
- Don’t: The information can be found at https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/debt-relief-info.
All tables must include a heading row
When linking to any page or file that is not part of the nku.edu domain, have that link open in a new window

For more information about Web Accessibility, please visit The NKU Accessibility site.

Accessibility

Accessibility is an important step in web development. At NKU, we are committed to creating an online environment where all people have an equal opportunity to consume and engage with Northern Kentucky University's content.

It’s important to be mindful of accessibility because we want everyone to be able to access our content and be able to understand our content easily. Before you post, make sure that your content is able to be viewed and understood by everyone in your audience by following the steps below!

Images

Add alternative text to any images. Alt Text can be added through every text component.
Images with Text Embedded: Best practice is to NOT have text embedded on an image. It can be difficult for reading because text can get too small, limiting accessibility tool functionality and decreasing a positive user experience. If your graphic resources are limited to photography with embedded text, you should put as much information in the alt text as possible.

Video

Add closed captioning to all videos! Be mindful about editing automatically generated captions and edit when necessary.
Avoid flashing or strobe lights in videos. Place a trigger warning in your caption if these types of images or edits can not be avoided.

Website

Images

Video

Marketing & Communication

NKU uses cookies on this website