Review: Tamil Virtual Academy Website ( tamilvu.org )

This is a brief review of Tamil Virtual Academy’s website. I hope this would help the authorities concerned while redesigning their website.

This review considers the following factors:

• Government websites don’t get a design update often. So, any grand redesign effort should stay good enough for another 5 to 10 years.
• Government websites may not have a generous budget to hire world class web designers and  might rely on in-house talent or designers from agencies like NIC.

With this in mind, I would request the following changes and features while doing a redesign.

• • • English and Tamil versions of the website should be separated to separate pages. Having both in the same page adds to the clutter and confused navigation.
    • Responsive design – Site is almost unusable from any smart phone.  Usage in tablet is somewhat OK. With the increased use of hand held devices, the redesign should cater to all screen sizes.
    • Better inbuilt search will help. Or at least, each HTML page should have proper SEO title, description. A site search like this using the Google Search provided, gives many unintelligible search results all titled அடுத்த பக்கம்.
    • Consistent look and feel – The site has different backgrounds, navigation for different pages. For example, check this and this with the homepage. The look and feel, navigation should be made consistent.
    • Restructured Navigation – It is very hard to find what we need. The navigation is cluttered and follows no logic. Navigation should be restructured based on the sitemap design.
    • Most accessed features like Library, Dictionary, Font download should be showcased prominently.
    • All text available in the site should be indexed by Google. This is a major change that will bring more visitors.
    • Back and front navigation using browser buttons is not working well in iPad (iOS7)
    • Orphaned pages like this should be linked to relevant pages. Universal navigation should be always available.
    • Remove Flash and other such outdated technology and replace it with latest technologies (example: HTML5 video players).
    • Outsource materials for sale to professional e-commerce shops. Makes it easy for buyers, reduces work load for TVA and may get more sales too.

Do you have any feedback? Please share your comments. Thanks.