Penzance Based Altcom Feature in UK Top 10

Cornwall based website development specialists, altcom, are celebrating after hearing the news that the website they designed and maintain for University College Falmouth, has featured in The Times Higher Education section as one of the UK’s top ten university websites.

Times Higher Education commissioned a survey of university websites in the UK to establish whether they give students the information they need, as well as providing cutting edge and dynamic interactive tools and information.

The research was carried out by a group of sixth-formers from Didcot Sixth Form, Gillingham School and Chigwell School, who were asked to explore and review university websites and give their feedback. 

University College Falmouth's (UCF) website, www.falmouth.ac.uk, which was designed, built and is maintained by altcom, was placed sixth in the list.  

The survey reviewed the websites of 152 UK higher education institutions and was designed to find the best examples of engagement with site visitors and the most effective use of emerging technologies.  The websites were graded in five main areas and given a mark out of five for each.  The key areas which were evaluated were; accessibility, the ease of making contact, use of online peer review, evidence of their unique role and character, and the amount of useful insight into life on campus.

The UCF website scored an impressive 22 out of a possible 25, beating King’s College London, Leeds Metropolitan University and London School of Economics, to name just a few.

Commenting in the news, Tom White, Head of Creative Development at altcom said:  “We are all absolutely delighted with the sixth formers’ vote of confidence.  Right from the start the UCF website was developed and designed with students in mind, so the fact they rate it so highly means a lot to us.

“We always work extremely hard to make sure any website or software we develop works for the end user and consumer and we are all thrilled that the UCF website has been so well received by the people it was designed for. 

“We are continually working on keeping our websites up to date, fresh and interactive and we’ve got a lot planned for the UCF site over the coming months. I look forward to bumping the UCF website to number one next year and knocking the University of Oxford off the top spot.”

The UCF website is built on a content management system (CMS) that is derived from open source code.  altcom has extended the system with additional modules. Unlike many university websites it is hosted externally with a fully managed hosting company, Rackspace, which ensures 24/7 uptime.

Full details of altcom’s services and clients can be found at www.altcom.co.uk.

Details of The Times Higher Education website survey can be found here.

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