At Academica we have been building websites, portals, and e-communities throughout North America for over a decade. Our web-related research services drills into your current or forthcoming website and provide a strong framework that ensures a distinctive audience-driven web environment – and provides a sound foundation to gain institutional acceptance for new web development.

Our standard research activities include the following:

1. Web Site Inception Audit 

This is an ideal exercise to complete as you move into a re-development phase on your web site/s. It provides an evidence-based framework that delivers an objective assessment of your current site – along with a set of recommendations to implement going forward. We often complete this as part of the front end of major developments – or work as consultants prior to an RFP being compiled.  A web site audit will:

• point out best practices of others sites in your field;
• analyze and critique your site architecture and user interfaces;
• review the interaction/conversion gaps that exist;
• review and recommend any changes to current traffic patterns/behaviors on the site;
• provide keyword analysis and make recommendations;
• provide on-page optimization analysis (Title Tag Optimization, Robots.txt Optimization, W3c
Validation, Image & Hyperlink Optimization, Header Tag Optimization, Canonicalization);
• review your social media approach and suggest improvements; 
• provide initial keyword and PPC campaign strategies Web Audit Checklist; and
• provide new user interfaces and information architecture based on these findings (optional)

 2. Best Practices Report                                         

We review best sites in your discipline and provide insight and recommendations on how the site might best be structured to lead the way in this category. We provide a report that will reviews your web site and makes direct comparisons to similar sites. We provide recommendations based on this comparison.

 3. Website Social Media Integration & SEO

Our social media group defines how social media can be best integrated and enhanced into your current social media and search engine activities. We develop a Social Media and SEO Strategy based on current best practices and highlight in this strategy how you can leapfrog over your competition. This includes an initial audit and the development of a strategy based on best practices in the sector.

 3. Usability Research & Validation       

We have developed a secondary research process which utilizes a preliminary web site with home and second level page user interface designs, naming and navigation.  We have a developed interview questionnaire that allows us to validate the navigation(usability) and creative (impact/experience) utilizing a mix of in person interviews and online interviews. The result is a pre-launch validation of navigation, usability and design which allows for refinements to the overall web development process and enhances the effectiveness of your the final web presence.