A university's website is a multipurpose electronic area designed with those many purposes in mind. It is used to both recruit and retain students. Those already connected to the campus, utilize it to improve their campus experience through increased communication, information, and access to services. The key to having a site which encourages many different uses is navigation. Having an easily navigable and understandable site entices visitors to return and enables them to get the most of the information available.
Navigation depends upon organization.
However, if a library has 500,000 books they must be methodically organized in order to be found when needed. A university's website is a large library of information and also must be organized properly to be of use. A university's home page should contain the minimum number of categories necessary to logically span all of its data. In this way, visitors are not overwhelmed or confused and can make initial choices quickly. Each of these category links brings up a page containing links for the component parts of that category.