improving the top five high value pages of your website

2013 EduWeb Conference | Boston @thePrimacy | @bigbadjeff | thePrimacy.com 1

IMPROVING FIVE HIGH-VALUE PAGES OF YOUR WEBSITE


If you are tweeting today…

@bigbadjeff

@theprimacy

#eduwebconf


What’s today all about?

Long-term strategy is important

Takes a lot of time

Effectiveness improved significantly by identifying critical impact pages

We will look at some "high-value" pages and discuss effective approaches

Focus on tactics that can immediately impact positive results


Your incentive to stay until the end…

…because who needs another iPad!


What do we mean by “high-value”?

A page, or group of pages,

within the digital experience

that have influence over

some major need or

decision point that will

greatly impact the

relationship between you

and your key target

audiences.


The Premise…

1.Making changes that require “consensus” among many people is difficult

2.Many “stakeholders” focus on the entry and exit pages

3. The “middle” contains pages that are highly influential in the journey and decision process

Is this even in question?

Think: Home Page and

Apply/Give Now buttons.

And, conveniently,

easier to impact!


Why

High Value

Look in the middle

Home Page Final calls to action

What How

The battleground areas


Typical Website Redesign Takes 9-18 Months! …Once you actually start!


See your life somewhere in here?Website not

meeting expectations

Plan for overhaul

Attempt to accomplish internally

Meet with groups around campus

No one can agree on anything

Consider hiring outside firm

Fight for budget

RFP process

Put on hold to wait for new incoming VP of Marketing

New VP hired

VP puts project on hold to assess overall needs

Budget reallocated to pressing need

Admission and Alumni teams scream for help

with the website

New VP secures the budget

RFP process

Outside firm hired


See your life somewhere in here?Website not

meeting expectations

Plan for overhaul

Attempt to accomplish internally

Meet with groups around campus

No one can agree on anything

Consider hiring outside firm

Fight for budget

RFP process

Put on hold to wait for new incoming VP of Marketing

New VP hired

VP puts project on hold to assess overall needs

Budget reallocated to pressing need

Admission and Alumni teams scream for help

with the website

New VP secures the budget

RFP process

Outside firm hired

And suddenly a

year has gone by!


Don’t get me wrong! I love working on complete redesign engagements.


Advancement

AcademicReputation

Admissions

Brand

Community

Influence

Outcomes

But Here’s What Matters:

YOUR BUSINESS

GOALS

Get them to• Be interested• Visit• Apply• Deposit Get them to

• Engage and connect

• Attend events• Give

You need to showcase• Programs• People• Proof


Easy, right?


No other category of website has a greater range of relevant target audiences than a college or university.

Feel free to tweet this.


Its easy to oversimplify

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Quote just heard from the audience…“Ugh, if I have to see that graphic one more time in a presentation!”


And…also easy to spoof!


Let’s look at the customer journey


Audience PrioritizationCategory Segment

Prospective Students and Influencers

Prospective Undergrad - Local

Prospective Undergrad – Out of State

Prospective Undergrad - International

Prospective Graduate Student

Parents of Prospective Student

Guidance Counselors

Current Students

Current Undergrad Student

Current Graduate Student

Parent of Current Student

Alumni

Donors

FacultyProspective Faculty

Current Faculty

Other Site Users

Media

Community Members

Job Seekers

Other Monmouth Staff

Key

HIGH PRIORITY MODERATE PRIORITY LOWER PRIORITY NOT A PRIORITY

Prioritization Criteria

Volume of site visitation Business objective

alignment Site role alignment

Implications Budget and effort is

aligned to priority


Develop personas


The Prospective Student Journey

Stage 1 – First impressions

Stage 2 – Fact-finding

Stage 3 – Visiting

Stage 4 – Applying

Stage 5 – Final decision

Stage 6 – Validation and transition

Helps illuminate high value

moments in the process


1 PROGRAMS OF STUDYMAJORS AND MINORS


Initial priority for prospective students

Prospective Students and Parents search for programs early in the process, and often throughout.

Organizational structure forces programs to be buried when organized on the website

Current Students are shuffled off to underserved Intranet.

Surveys / interviews* reflect sentiment that student intranet/portals are woefully under performing.

Students want public-facing site to serve them as well.

*Noel-Levitz and Primacy primary research


Make it easy to find Majors and Minors and Programs of Study


Don’t forget the “undecided”


Don’t forget the undecided


Make it easy to find programs…


…then celebrate them…


…and help them learn more, connect the dots!


Narrowing the search via filters…


…and easy-to-decode groups


Did I mention “celebrate” the program?

The global navigation recedes in importance.


This gets more complex as you consider an entire university

Sorts programs by College and alphabetically…


This gets more complex as you consider an entire university

…with visual cues for degree and format type


Program Finders allow for broad and narrow searches

Enables (prospective) students to search for programs across all Colleges based on their status, criteria and interest


An ambitious effort


Show me. Not sure. Surprise me.


Aligned with the schools “7 skills for success”


Guiding thoughts

Don’t make “them” have to figure “you” out.

They don’t care which college, school or department the program of study resides.

Include one page on your website that lists every major, minor, program of study.

Good for SEO (internally and externally).

Sets stage to celebrate programs.

Sets stage for “connecting the dots”.


2VISIT


The campus visit is a primary inflection point for selecting a school Long understood by every Admissions

Director is the clear fact that getting a prospective student on campus for a tour significantly increases the likelihood of enrollment.

Yet, many websites do little to incent a campus visit.

A missed opportunity is in building the excitement around the campus visit before they arrive.


A few thoughts

Quick Rant!

Why are Apply and Give buttons everywhere, but not Visit?

Most Visit pages do a good job at the “what” and “how”

Serve geo-coded content when possible

Expand the concept of “the campus visit”

Don’t assume they are here to only schedule an appointment or get directions

Use opportunity to differentiate the campus visit


InformationalExperientialTransactional Ideally the “Visit” page

is all three


InformationalExperientialTransactional


Elevate the right content


A Visit section, versus one long page

Note how they visually break up the

content.


Campus Visit pageexample: before



Campus Visit pageexample: after



Woven into overall experience


Make the form GREAT!

And make it mobile!


Help the planning process


How does one “visit” an online school?


Visit Page

Primary inflection point for college selection

Increase experiential nature on website

Balance between enticing visitors to tour campus and providing experience for those that cannot

Don’t forget mobile

Find a way to differentiate

Add “Visit” to the footer


3SOCIAL


Social landscape challenges

Multiple channels

Some get traction, some don’t

How many “chicklet” icons can one page fit?

Value of driving someone away from your website?


Got social icons on my website? Check.

Are we sending this message?“Thanks for coming, now please

leave”


Pulling feeds in, not pushing away

2013 EduWeb Conference | Boston @thePrimacy | @bigbadjeff | thePrimacy.com

What a difference a year makes

65

http://admissions.illinois.edu/socialnetwork/


Social Hashboard

Pulls real-time feeds from social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) into one aggregated destination.


Knowing when not to follow the masses

After scouring this site this is

the ONLY social element

found.


YouTube: know the changes

68

Key Attributes:• Brand channel• Well segmented top

banner • Well structured playlists• Asset naming and meta

data• Closed-captioning• Integration across

digital properties

Major SEO opportunity


See our blog post: http://ow.ly/kTYGp

http://ow.ly/kTYGp

http://ow.ly/kTYGp

http://ow.ly/kTYGp


Instagram


Look outside education for inspiration

71


Blogs: still alive and well… and effective

72

Key Attributes:• Home page prominence

• Blogger profiles

• Well categorized

• Effective use of video


Social Media Landing Page (the Voice of your school)

Embrace channels; test and learn

Integrate with a social strategy, not randomly

Create dynamic feeds with official channels

Include student and faculty blogs


4TOPICS


Eschew organizational boundaries

All schools have topics and themes that make them distinctive.

Topics/themes transcend any one part of the organization.

Consider ways in which to “celebrate” your school, topically/thematically.


Identify unifying topics across campus


…and then celebrate them


I mean really celebrate them


Another robust approach


Which leads to this…


But where’s the main navigation?


Create your own topic mash-up


Topic Pages

Tear down the organizational barriers.

Create pages that address key topics.

Use to aggregate access to content found throughout the website.


5NUTS AND BOLTS


404 Error Page

Opportunity for

branding, differentiation,

wayfinding, memorable

moments.


Not really acceptable today…


At least they have something…


Don’t make them go somewhere else


Use as a branding opportunity


Footer

Add high-value page links for Programs of Study, Visit, Apply

Reward users that have come this far

SEO impact

Easy place to tuck your new topic/aggregator links?


“Let me get this straight. You want me to scroll all the way back to the top of the page?”


Straightforward and organized


Icons for visual cues


High value tasks prominent


Help with the home page battles?


Robust but lightweight in code


And we haven’t even talked much about mobile!


Mobile Contact / Inquiry Pages and Forms Easy to make one-off

mobile versions.


Quick Tangent Before Finishing…


Using high-value “tasks” as organizing principle


FINAL THOUGHTS


Think about…

Program Pages• Celebrate core of what

you offer• Help them connect the

dots

The Campus Visit

• Inflection point of selecting a schoolSocial

Media

• Why do we keep telling people to go away?

Topics

• Tear down organizational walls

Nuts and Bolts

• The unsung heroes


Why

High Value

Look in the middle

Home Page Final calls to action

What How

The battleground areas


THE HOMEPAGE IS DEAD!

LONG LIVE THE HOMEPAGE!


Avoid the home page battleground


THANK YOU

@thePrimacy

@bigbadjeff

[email protected]

improving the top five high value pages of your website

Education