let your website do the work: create a viewbook from your online content
TRANSCRIPT
Let your website do the work: create a viewbook from your online content
Marc-Olivier Ouellet, coordinatorNAGAP April 2015
admission.umontreal.ca
How many of you:– Print copies of your viewbook / catalogue?– Consider that they spent too much resources on it?– Feel confident that your effort is worth it?– Can measure the effectiveness of this tool?
Questions
admission.umontreal.ca
Learn how to build a rich database to store all the data about your programs from various sources, including PeopleSoftDetermine innovation ways to leverage your online content to build powerful toolsCreate a dynamic and personalized viewbook/catalogue that builds upon your online database
Learning Objectives
Université de Montréal at a Glance
UdeM’s campus, comprising some 40 buildings, is clustered around the majestic Art Deco tower of Roger-Gaudry Hall at the heart of beautiful city of Montréal
admission.umontreal.ca
+66 000 students in 16 faculties and affiliated schools
Université de Montréal at a Glance
admission.umontreal.ca
2 600 professors-researchers465 chairs and research units37 affiliated health institutions$526M in research revenue
Université de Montréal at a Glance
250 undergraduate programs (74%)350 graduate programs (26%)16 750 graduate students7 870 international students
admission.umontreal.ca
We produce annually our Guide d’admission : – Hybrid between University catalogue and a
Viewbook– It contains descriptions of all undergraduate
programs offered at UdeM, including :• Admission Requirements• Program Structure (courses)• Career Prospective• And more…
Admission Guide
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As of before 2014, it was a print publication of about 350 pages, printed in 29 000 copiesDistributed to students and high school counsellors throughout the province of QuébecTime consuming to produce, assemble and validateCostly to produce– About $70 000 CDN each year– For design, printing, and shipping – Excluding HR costs
Admission Guide
Lenghtly process
In-house system
Done by an external firm
Manually assembling
4 to 5 months to accomplish
admission.umontreal.ca
New system = end of an era
Peoplesoft Legacy systems
PeopleSoft Current websites
X
We had an opportunity: – To reflect on our publications and consult with our
partners (high school counsellors)– To build a strategy that would allow us to improve how
we push information to our prospective students and to measure the impact of our communication tools
– To get up to speed with new technologies to simplify the way we work internally
An opportunity
AnalysisFeedback
Trends &Technology
Effective strategy
Successful change
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Program is the most important factor for a prospective student when choosing a university*
It is therefore important to keep program information current and attractive. And distribute as widely as possible: – online – mobile – print
Key Factors in Decision-making
*EDge Interactive – SchoolFinder Group, « What Students Want », Group Canadian Student Survey 2011
What types of communications do student prefer?
Students habits have changed
Via the 2014 Noel-Levitz E-Expectations Report
Transform our focus and activities
Traditional recruitment Inbound recruitment
Field activities
Travelon the road
Web et new
media
Promotion and ads
Wrriting content/
multimedia
Promotion and ads
Analysis
Guidance, follow-up
Field activities
New media
Web
Take control of our recruitment funnel
Public
• I discover UdeM (notoriety)
Prospect
• I am interested in programs at UdeM
Contact
• I collect information on programs at UdeM
Candida
te
• I apply for admission at UdeM(and possibly at other universities too)
Admitted
• I’m admitted at the UdeM (and possibly at other universities too)
Enrolled
• I enroll at UdeM
Conv
ersi
ons
AnalysisNeed to develop
metrics and dashboards
ReactivityProactivityBusiness
Intelligence
admission.umontreal.ca
Make content about programs available on Web pagesTransform our viewbook into an online documentCapture information about our prospective students when they come to get the online documentDevelop a single platform for distributing the content (Web and print)
Our goals
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Our idea
WebsiteDatabase
HTML
PDFPDF
PDFGuide?
Develop a single platform for distributing the content (Web and print)
admission.umontreal.ca
We gathered all public content regarding our programs– Current catalogue / viewbook– Current websites, HTML pages, CMS, …– PeopleSoft: reports, tables, extractions, …– Legacy system, databases, web services, …– Publications: PDF, word documents, InDesign, …
We made an inventory of all our contentWe built a database and entered the content
Build a new website with rich database
admission.umontreal.ca
Export your database in a special XML format, readable by Adobe InDesignImport your XML into an Adobe InDesign file and map your content elements with design elements
Using Adobe InDesign XML Import Function
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Pros:– Can produce great results because its flexibility. Once the
content is imported, you can design all elements as you wish inside Adobe InDesign
Cons:– Need to have a developer to export your content into the
Adobe XML file required (not as easy task!)– Not a lot of documentation online– Not a lot of developers that master this technique, and not a
lot of designers know how to manage this type of document– Adobe Import function is picky and somewhat buggy– Does not handle HTML properly
Pros and cons for using this technique
Return on our first attempt
2 to 3 months to accomplish
We produced our Guide d’admission 2014-2015 using this techniqueWe saved 1 to 2 months, and 20 000$ doing it
admission.umontreal.ca
Make content about programs available on Web pagesTransform our viewbook into an online documentCapture information about our prospective students when they come to get the online documentDevelop a single platform for distributing the content (Web and print)
Did we meet our goals ?
admission.umontreal.ca
Create a print version of our guide for high school counsellor onlyCreate a personalized online version for students– Students would come to our site to build their guide
and choose the content they wanted– Allow students to order a customized print copy of their
guide that the University would ship them for free
Our refined strategy
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Our second attempt: Generating PDF files
WebsiteDatabase
HTML
PDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDF
Create Web page template dedicated for printCreate a specific style sheet for print (CSS file)– @media print { … }
Adjust the styles of your Web elements (fonts, images, colors, texts) to show nicely in print– You can hide elements, like videos, headers, footers,
menus using special CSS code • Ex: .video { display: none; }
How to – Step 1: Create print-specific page
Convert your HTML directly to PDF using open-source library like PhamtonJS (http://phantomjs.org/)– Programmatically capture web contents and create web
site screenshots in PDF.– You can specify paper format (Letter, A4, …), margins,
orientation (portrait, landscape)– You can have custom footers and headers– You can have page numbers
Learn more: http://jsreport.net/learn/phantom-pdf
How to – Step 2: Convert HTML to PDF
To make our print Guide d’admission publication, we had to create a “light version” of our PDF– Full PDF contains too many pages
We created a light version of our HTML print-specific page with only the content that we wanted in our print publication– No header– No footer
We converted these light HTML pages into single PDF documentsWe assembled them into a larger InDesign document
How to – Step 3: Create light-version PDF
Return on our second attempt
1 to 2 months to accomplish
We produced our Guide d’admission 2015-2016 using this techniqueWe saved another month doing it, and 10 000$
Our plan to create a personalized guide
Guide configuration
stored in a user profile
Cover page
Other documents
Generated PDF from the Web with PhamtonJS
(http://phantomjs.org/)
Merge of all PDF fileswith PDFtk Server
(https://www.pdflabs.com/)
Need to automate this stepPDF
In order to create the personalized version, we need to build a system to allow students to create a profile
Creating the online version – Step 1
Allow 20 programs by guideNo limit on the number of guidesMandatory and optional documentsDescription of all courses inside the programs selectedContent based on type of students (foreign vs local student), cycle (undergrads or grads), etc.Allow to name the guide, delete, modifyAllow to order a print copy
Options for students
Let students from Canada order a print copyWe created a form to collect their postal addressWe built a daily batch process that generated all personalized guides– with a special front page– merged them into a zip file– sent an email notification
Order a print copy at home
To encourage students to create a guide, we launcheda contestSimple rules:1. Create an account2. Create a guide3. Submit an application
Get a chance to be reimburse your application fees
Contest « Collect your possibilities »
admission.umontreal.ca
Make content about programs available on Web pagesTransform our viewbook into an online documentCapture information about our prospective students when they come to get the online documentDevelop a single platform for distributing the content (Web and print)
Did we meet our goals ?
admission.umontreal.ca
16 400+ accounts were created4 100+ personalized guides were generated– Only 140 orders for a print copy
Results after 6 months…
admission.umontreal.ca
Reduce time to produce our admission guideReduce our cost of producing our guideMaintain good relation with our high school counsellorCollect data about our prospective studentsOpen our publication to foreign and graduate studentsMeasure our recruitment efforts
Outcomes
Tool to measure
Contact database
Create a guide
Login / Registration
ERP
Applications
Link your data
Period of September 15th 2014 to March 31st 2015 :– 23% of students who created an account filled out an
application• Compared to 3,5% of our Website visitors
– 38% of students who created an online viewbook filled out an application• Compared to 19% who did not
– 43% of students who created an online viewbook and downloaded it in PDF filled out an application• Compared to 36% who did not
– 35% of students who created an online viewbook and ordered a print copy filled out an application
Analysis
Plans for our 2016-2017 guide
2 weeks to accomplish
This summer, we will produce the Guide d’admission 2016-2017 using the same technique, with automated mergeWe can generate about guide in less than 10 min!
admission.umontreal.ca
Any question?Slides are avaiable on Slideshare– slideshare.net/marcolivier_ca
Contact me :– Marc-Olivier Ouellet– Email: [email protected]– Twitter: @marcolivier_ca– linkedin.com/in/mouellet
Discussions