Website Best Practices

Best Practices Guidance for Web Editors

This page outlines the best practice-based requirements that TTUHSC team members with website responsibilities must adhere to. These practices ensure a high-quality, accessible, compliant web presence that reflects the university’s values and objectives.

User Experience

The university’s websites must prioritize user experience, ensuring ease of navigation, clarity and accessibility to all audiences. The following guidelines are specific to webpages hosted at ttuhsc.edu. For an in-depth understanding of the TTUHSC brand, please visit the brandguide.

Navigation: Ensure intuitive and easy-to-follow navigation that leads users quickly to relevant content. Menus and links should be clear, descriptive and consistent across all pages. New pages must adhere to the site navigation and web editors should avoid orphaning pages.
Mobile Optimization: The website must be fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices, ensuring the same level of functionality and ease of use on both desktop and mobile.
Page Load Speed: Ensure fast page loading times, optimizing images, scripts and other elements to improve performance. Refer to the pre-publish checklist in Appendix D for link to Google's testing tool.
Visual Consistency: Maintain consistency in the use of layout, fonts, color schemes and overall design to provide a seamless and professional experience. While this is largely controlled by the global CSS, any customizations must remain within TTUHSC’s visual brand identity guidelines.

Accessibility

TTUHSC is committed to ensuring equal access to web based information and services for all constituencies as well as complying with standards outlined within the Texas Administrative Code (TAC) and the Federal Government standards. For more on our accessibility policy, click here. For links to the specific parts of the TAC code, see Appendix A.

Alt Text for Images: Every image must include descriptive alt text to ensure that screen readers can interpret the content for visually impaired users.
Keyboard Navigation: Ensure that the website is fully navigable using only the keyboard, providing accessibility to users who cannot operate a mouse.
Color Contrast: All text and visual elements must meet WCAG guidelines for sufficient color contrast (minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for text).
Accessible Forms: Ensure that all forms are labeled clearly and can be filled out using assistive technology. Provide error feedback in a format accessible to all users.

Brand Identity Compliance

TTUHSC brand standards are designed to aid in consistently representing TTUHSC as a leading educator, health care provider and research institution in all communicative formats. The website must reflect and promote the university’s official brand identity. All content creators must adhere to the brand guidelines to ensure consistency across the entire university’s web presence. For an in-depth understanding of the TTUHSC brand, please visit the brandguide.

Logo Usage: If any official marks are used, they must be official university logos and must be used in the prescribed format and positioning, without alteration. Official logos can be accessed in the brand portal.
Typography and Color Palette: Use the official typography and color palette as outlined in the university’s brand guide.
Tone and Messaging: Content must align with the university’s tone and messaging guidelines, reflecting professionalism and our values-based culture.
Images and Videos: Use approved images and media that align with the university’s brand guidelines. Ensure that visuals reflect the diversity and mission of the institution. An approved image library is available in the brand portal.

Content Management

Content creators should keep an audience-first mindset when planning content. Website choices should prioritize content that is accurate, timely and relevant to the needs of its users. Refer to the content and SEO cheat sheet in Appendix C and the pre-publish checklist in Appendix D for specs, explanation and more guidance.

Quality Assurance: Regularly review and update content to ensure it is accurate and free from errors. All outdated or irrelevant information should be promptly removed or revised. For example, every semester course calendars, enrollment windows and academic calendars should be reviewed and replaced when necessary.
Content Approvals: Understand and adhere to any department-specific workflows for content creation, review and approval to ensure all published content adheres to university standards.
Multimedia Content: All videos should include captions, and audio files should have transcripts available to ensure accessibility and enhance user engagement.
Content Hierarchy and on-page SEO optimizations: Maintaining a logical content flow and optimizing for SEO helps boost visibility in search results, improves accessibility and increases user engagement. This ensures that content serves both the needs of the audience and the goals of the university.
- - Keyword Research and Integration
    Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases your target audience is searching for. Integrate these keywords naturally into titles, headings, meta descriptions, URLs and body content. Avoid keyword stuffing by focusing on delivering high-quality, informative content.
  - Optimized Meta Tags (Title and Description)
    Ensure every page has a unique and optimized meta title (50-60 characters) and meta description (150-160 characters) that accurately reflects the content of the page. These tags should include relevant keywords and entice users to click from search engine results.
  - Use of Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)
    Implement a clear content hierarchy using header tags (H1 for main titles, H2 for subheadings and H3 for subsections). This helps search engines understand the structure of your content and improves user experience, which contributes to higher rankings.
  - Internal Linking
    Include internal links to other relevant pages on the website. This helps search engines discover more pages, distributes page authority and keeps users engaged by guiding them through related content.
  - Image Optimization
    Optimize all images by using descriptive file names, alt text that includes keywords and compressed file sizes to improve page load speed. Properly optimized images help with accessibility and can also rank in image search results.

Legal and Compliance

The website must comply with all legal obligations, including data protection regulations, intellectual property rights and user privacy policies.

Copyright and Intellectual Property: All content, including images, videos and written text, must respect copyright laws. Content creators are responsible for ensuring that the university has the appropriate rights to use all materials on the website.
Academic Compliance: Ensure that the requirements for any accrediting bodies’ specific accreditation language is published at the appropriate level of visibility throughout the relevant sections of the website.
Senate Bill 17 Compliance: Ensure that any new or updated content on the university website adheres to the provisions of Senate Bill 17. Content updates must reflect the university’s alignment with state law and maintain the clean audit received in 2024. Any references to questionable content should be reviewed/approved in advance, revised or removed at the direction of the Office of Institutional Excellence and Culture.
Board of Regents Rule 3.01.2e Compliance: Ensure that any new or updated content adheres to Board of Regents Rule 3.01.2e, “TTUHSC is prohibited from giving preferential treatment to any private or public organization or individual.” For example, by linking to any outside vendors’ website from TTUHSC’s website, TTUHSC could be viewed as giving this vendor preferential treatment.