A Website Strategy & UX Consultation by Alina
Signal & Strategies | Website Strategy & UX Department
The consultation: Is your radio station’s digital experience working for its listeners?
A radio station might have fantastic presenters, interesting programmes, and a loyal audience. But what happens when someone discovers the station online and cannot figure out how to listen, find their favourite show, or check the broadcasting schedule?
That is where user experience becomes important.
For this consultation, I am looking at the college radio station where Grace Ivers works in Off-Campus and considering how she could help improve its digital experience.
The station itself is our fictional case study. We are not assuming its existing website has specific problems. Instead, I will identify common usability issues that Grace could investigate and recommend practical changes the station could make.
My objective is simple: make it easier for listeners to discover the station, start listening, find programmes, and return for more.
Because a radio station’s digital experience should not end at the broadcast. It should help people find their way into it.
1. Start with the listener, not the layout
Before changing colours, rearranging menus, or redesigning the homepage, I would ask Grace to help us understand how people actually use the station’s digital platforms.
Consider three potential visitors.
The first-time listener
Someone hears about the station from a friend and visits its website. They want to know what it plays and how to listen live.
The regular listener
Someone already loves a particular programme. They visit the website to check when it airs and whether they can listen to a previous episode.
The student who wants to participate
Someone wants to discover student presenters, learn about upcoming shows, or find out how to get involved with the station.
These visitors have different needs. A successful website should accommodate all three without making anyone work unnecessarily hard.
I would recommend a short usability review before committing to a redesign. Grace could ask a few students to complete these tasks on their phones and observe where they hesitate, become confused, or struggle to find information.
We would use those observations to prioritise changes based on actual user needs rather than assumptions about what looks good.
2. Recommendation one: Make listening the priority
A radio station website has a primary purpose that differs from that of a typical business website.
People often visit because they want to hear something.
If the live player is difficult to locate, buried beneath a long introduction, or confusing to operate, the website creates unnecessary friction between the listener and the broadcast.
What I would recommend
Grace could propose a homepage layout that places the essential listening information near the top.
The first screen should clearly communicate:
- The station’s name and identity.
- A prominent Listen Live control.
- The programme currently on air, where this information is available.
- The next scheduled show.
- A clear route to the full programme schedule.
The player should have understandable play, pause, and volume controls. Where technically feasible, playback should continue when listeners navigate between pages rather than unexpectedly restarting.
The website should never assume that visitors already understand how the station operates.
How Grace could help: As someone familiar with the station’s programmes and audience, Grace could identify the questions listeners regularly ask and help translate them into clearer homepage content. She could then present the proposed layout to whoever manages the station’s website.
This would give her a practical starting point without requiring her to redesign or rebuild the website herself.
3. Recommendation two: Make the programme schedule easier to navigate
Imagine discovering a programme you enjoy but having no idea when it airs again.
A schedule that is difficult to read, outdated, or awkward to use on mobile can make returning to the station unnecessarily complicated.
What I would recommend
The station’s schedule should make it easy to answer three questions:
What’s on now?
Highlight the current programme when reliable scheduling information is available.
What’s on next?
Show upcoming programmes with their start times and presenter names.
When can I hear my favourite show again?
Provide an accessible weekly schedule that works on desktop and mobile devices.
Each programme could also have its own page containing a short description, presenter information, broadcast times, and links to available recordings.
This would give individual shows a place to live beyond a single time slot.
How Grace could help: Grace could review the existing schedule with the station team, flag confusing labels or missing information, and recommend a clearer structure. She could also help gather accurate presenter biographies and programme descriptions.
Her familiarity with the station would be valuable here because effective UX depends on understanding the information people actually need.
4. Recommendation three: Design for accessibility, not just aesthetics
A website can look beautiful and still be difficult to use.
For a radio station, accessibility is particularly important because the audience may include people with visual impairments, motor disabilities, hearing impairments, or different cognitive and language needs.
The website should not create barriers around a medium intended to make content accessible to listeners.
What I would recommend
The station should review:
- Keyboard navigation: Can visitors operate important controls without a mouse?
- Screen-reader support: Are buttons, navigation elements, and player controls clearly labelled?
- Colour contrast: Is text readable against its background?
- Captions and transcripts: Where recordings include speech, can suitable text alternatives be provided?
- Mobile usability: Are controls large enough to operate comfortably on a phone?
- Clear language: Can visitors understand menus, instructions, and programme descriptions without unnecessary jargon?
A live audio player deserves particular attention. Its controls should be identifiable, operable, and understandable to people using assistive technology.
I would use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as a reference for the audit and recommend appropriate testing rather than assuming that a visually attractive interface is automatically accessible.
How Grace could help: Grace could participate in a basic accessibility review, document barriers she observes, and help the station team gather feedback from listeners with different needs. More technical issues could then be referred to the website developer or accessibility specialist.
The aim would be to make the experience more inclusive, not to place the responsibility for every technical fix on Grace.
5. Recommendation four: Make programmes easier to discover
A station’s website should do more than provide a live stream.
It can also introduce listeners to presenters, help them discover unfamiliar programmes, and make previously broadcast content easier to find.
What I would recommend
I would organise the website around a small number of clearly labelled sections:
Listen Live: The direct route to the current broadcast.
Schedule: A readable guide to upcoming programmes.
Shows: An organised directory of programmes and their presenters.
Episodes: A searchable archive of available recordings, where the station has permission to publish them.
About the Station: Information about its purpose, student involvement, and community.
Get Involved: Clear information for students interested in presenting, volunteering, or contributing.
The navigation should reflect the station’s real offerings. There is no need to create a page simply because another radio website has one.
If the station publishes interviews or recorded programmes, those pages could include descriptive titles, summaries, publication dates, and links to related shows.
This could also create additional opportunities for people to discover the station through search engines.
How Grace could help: She could map the existing content, identify information that is difficult to locate, and work with presenters to ensure their programme descriptions accurately represent their shows.
The result would be a more organised website that serves both new visitors and existing listeners.
6. Recommendation five: Make the mobile experience a priority
Students are likely to access digital content from a range of devices, including smartphones. The station should therefore be tested on actual mobile screens rather than relying exclusively on how the desktop homepage looks.
A website can technically fit onto a small screen while still being frustrating to use.
What I would recommend
The mobile experience should include:
- A clearly visible listening control.
- Simple navigation with recognisable labels.
- Readable programme times and descriptions.
- Buttons that are easy to tap.
- Pages that load efficiently on mobile connections.
- A layout that does not force users to zoom or scroll sideways.
I would also check how the website behaves when a listener moves between the schedule, a programme page, and the live player.
These are practical tests, not cosmetic preferences. The objective is to reduce the effort required to complete common tasks.
How Grace could help: Grace could test the website on her own phone and ask a small group of students to complete a few realistic tasks. Their feedback could help identify which mobile issues should be addressed first.
7. Recommendation six: Give listeners a way to provide feedback
UX does not end when a website launches.
People’s needs change, schedules evolve, and new features can introduce unexpected problems. The station needs a way to learn from its audience.
What I would recommend
The station could provide a short feedback form or a clearly labelled contact option.
Rather than asking broad questions such as “Do you like our website?”, I would focus on specific experiences:
- Was it easy to start listening?
- Could you find the programme schedule?
- Did you locate the show you were looking for?
- Was anything confusing or difficult to use?
- What is one improvement that would make the website more useful?
The station could also review website analytics, including visits to programme pages, use of available listening controls, and navigation between sections, where those measurements are technically available and collected appropriately.
Analytics should help answer questions, not replace listening to people.
How Grace could help: She could gather feedback, group recurring problems, and present a short report to the station team. This would give decision-makers a clearer picture of what listeners need instead of relying on isolated complaints or personal opinions.
8. The implementation plan: From observations to improvements
I would not recommend changing the entire website at once.
A staged approach would allow the station to address important problems first, test its changes, and avoid investing time in features that listeners may not need.
Phase one: Audit
Grace and the station team review the existing website, identify common listener tasks, and document usability concerns.
Phase two: Prioritise
The team ranks findings by their impact on listeners, the number of people affected, and the effort required to resolve each issue.
A confusing live player or inaccessible navigation would generally deserve attention before a minor decorative inconsistency.
Phase three: Prototype
Alina’s UX department develops a proposed layout or simple wireframe showing how the homepage, schedule, and programme pages could be organised.
The station team reviews the proposal before technical implementation.
Phase four: Test
A small group of listeners attempts the same tasks using the proposed design. The team records whether the changes make those tasks easier and identifies any remaining problems.
Phase five: Improve
The station implements the highest-priority changes, reviews the results, and plans the next round of improvements.
This process makes UX an ongoing practice rather than a one-time redesign.
9. How we would measure success
I would establish a baseline before introducing numerical targets.
The evaluation would focus on whether listeners can complete important tasks more easily.
| UX objective | What we would examine |
|---|---|
| Easier listening | Whether users can locate and operate the live player |
| Better navigation | Whether users can find programmes and schedules |
| Improved accessibility | Whether identified barriers have been resolved |
| Stronger mobile usability | Task completion and usability feedback on phones |
| Better content discovery | Visits to programme pages and available episode archives |
| More useful information | Feedback about programme details and station navigation |
We would compare the results before and after implementation where reliable measurements are available.
We would also avoid assuming that a change automatically increases listening time or audience retention. Those outcomes need to be measured, and other factors may influence them.
The purpose of measurement is to understand whether the experience has improved and where further work is needed.
Final consultation: The station needs more than a good broadcast
A radio station’s digital presence should support the experience people come for.
That means making listening straightforward, presenting programmes clearly, designing for accessibility, and helping visitors discover content that interests them.
Grace could contribute by bringing her understanding of the station into the UX process: identifying recurring questions, gathering listener feedback, reviewing programme information, and helping the team prioritise improvements.
My role as the UX consultant would be to turn those observations into a structured audit, proposed designs, usability tests, and recommendations the station could implement.
We would work collaboratively, with the station’s technical team responsible for changes requiring development expertise.
The central recommendation is this: design the digital experience around what listeners are trying to do, not around what the station wants to display.
A good radio station gives people something worth hearing. A well-designed website makes finding it easier.
Alina
Website Strategy & UX Consultant
Signal & Strategies
Research and further reading
- Pro.Radio: Best Radio Station Website Design — Guidance on listening controls, schedules, programme discovery, and listener journeys.
- Pro.Radio: How to Create a Radio Station Website — Recommended site structure for listening, programmes, schedules, and contact information.
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative — Resources for understanding and improving web accessibility.
This consultation uses a fictional college radio station as its case study. The recommendations are proposed improvements to investigate, not claims that Grace’s workplace currently has these usability problems.