Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA)
is in charge of artistic programming at Lincoln Center, on Manhattan’s Upper
West Side. Every year it arranges some 5,000 programs, initiatives, and events,
among them the Mostly Mozart Festival and Live from Lincoln Center. LCPA also
plays major roles in arts and education nationwide and manages the Lincoln
Center campus that is home to ten resident organizations, including the Metropolitan
Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the Juilliard School. LCPA’s About Us
page is here.
OVERALL GRADE: D
It is always a bad sign when
the Wikipedia article on an organization is more informative than its own About
Us pages. That’s the case with Lincoln Center, on whose website high-tech bells
and whistles overpower content. The background of each LCPA page is a full-screen
photo of Lincoln Center, over which the text is superimposed in tiny white letters
against a semi-transparent black background. It’s difficult to read on screen.
When printed out, the text appears in pale gray on a white ground, surrounded
by part of the photo: a lot of ink, but not applied to what we need to read.
Menus heads and subheads duly appear if we hover over them, but sometimes they
overlap, obscuring the choices that are offered.
Products/Services: D
The perfect place to display
Lincoln Center’s vast artistic scope would be on the History
page. Instead, the history is a series of six separate timelines with over a
dozen items each. Every head of the organization is listed, every major
building renovation or initiative, every major festival … without a single
illustration. There’s no emphasis, no way to know if any of the content is more
important than the rest.
To top it off, the History page
isn’t available as one of the About Us subheads. It’s only accessible from the
footer of the main LCPA page,
under General Information.
Personality: E
The Board of Directors and Senior Team are merely
lists of names and titles, with no photos, contact information, or links – no
sense of where these leaders want Lincoln Center to be heading. Surely LCPA
could have found at least one inspiring quote from Reynold Levy, who has been
its president for ten years.
Accessibility: D
The Contact Us link at the foot
of the About Us page is a drop-down menu, with a link for an online form or a
phone number. Oddly, there is no mailing address for the administrative offices
of LCPA, and no option for queries from potential donors, media, or researchers.
TAKEAWAY
LCPA’s website fails to convey –
either through content or visuals - the excitement of an organization that presents
some of the world’s finest art performances. Content is held hostage to chic
design that might work in a print publication but is all wrong for the Web.
Does your Web site’s “About
Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities?
Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key
to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can
you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Contact us if you’d
like to have your site evaluated—there’s no charge and no obligation.
Today’s example was chosen
at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.
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