So, although I get annual statements from the student loans company, I decided that I should checkout their online offering so I can check my remaining balance when I think of it, instead of when I’m at home and can access my paper statements.

So off I went to Google (where else!?) and put in ‘UK student loans’.  That brought up The Student Loans Company.  That sounds right so I go to the site.

There looks like lots of useful information on here, but after a few minutes of browsing around I eventually found a link near the bottom of the ‘Contact Us’ page about loan repayments.  It turns out that this is a completely separate website (http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk).

Two points come immediately to mind:

1. Why is this a separate website when it’s all managed by the same company?
2. Surely a little bit of thought around the potential users accessing the SLC website would lead you to conclude that some (many?) would want information about repaying their loans?

For now I’m going to accept the two website decision. It smells to me like the classic mistake of organising your website around the company structure, instead of how customers/users view your company.

Instead, for this post, I’m going to look at my second point. I’ve thrown together a quick addition to the site, which would alleviate this issue, whilst keeping consistent with the branding.

You can see that this simple, extra banner of highlighted text at the top of the page clearly leads users to the repayments website.  Perhaps an additional link in the left hand menu would also help as many users will scan menus looking for relevant words when on a new, unfamiliar site.

Today’s lesson is to always remember who your website is for.  Think of the users…