University department's web pages are the focal point for a wide variety of users, including prospective students, current students, parents, staff and alumni. We provide a task analysis of what each user group will look for on university department websites. This analysis is based on analysis of existing sites, hardcopy materials, user search query logs, and interviews with users. Good task analyses are reusable as a design aid. Checking a site to ensure that common users' tasks can be

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... d will help ensure completeness of a site. Further reflection on these tasks can enhance the clarity and consistency of the procedures used when providing navigational aids. We use the task analysis to show that five existing university sites provide good but varying amounts of support for these tasks. This analysis of university websites can be applied more generally to other websites, such as a corporation, non-profit or an e-store.