Your Higher Education Marketing Link of the Week… University of Delaware: Success after Graduation… 27 October 2017

A “Success” Website Easy to Search by Degree Level and Academic Major

University of Delaware Success After GraduationWebsite content highlighting the success of recent graduates at college and university websites isn’t hard to find today. What is much more difficult to find is what will be of most interest to potential students: data on the success of people graduating from the academic majors that interest them.

As you can see from the mobile image here, University of Delaware sets a gold standard by opening the mobile version of the “Career Outcomes” site not with a general claim of the (almost always 90%+) of people employed after a year or so, but with the ability to sort by degree level and major.

The more usual information on all grads comes along right after that. The design format allows easy scanning of large content blocks on both large and small screens. An “Employment by Location” map for the U.S. includes a list of 10 top states and 10 top urban areas where graduates are working.

Another important design note: on desktop or mobile, the page does not open only with the increasingly customary design feature of a photo stretching from one side of the page to the other… without any content message. University of Delaware instead elects to confirm the reason for visiting the page on top of the photo: “See How UD Graduates Are Achieving Success.” A small point? No. In many if not most cases, a “words + photo” combo like this will have a stronger marketing impact than just a photo that often might be taken at almost any college or university.

On Mobile…

The site earned a “Fair” rating from Google Test My site for an 8 second mobile download speed. Google projected a visitor loss rate of 28 percent.

Follow the Link of the Week

Visit an exemplary version of a university “success” site when you travel to the University of Delaware Career Outcomes page.

A web writing note… banish “matriculated,” convert to “enrolled”

Voice search is increasing. To prepare for when your website is “voice responsive,” start now to eliminate as much jargon as possible. One “outcomes” site I reviewed this week included content on where people “matriculated” for graduate school. Normal human beings outside higher education don’t talk like that. Much better to tell potential students where your graduates have “enrolled.”

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Link of the Week Archive

Regular readers will notice that the Link of the Week selection now appear with my blog. To review initial 2016 selections and previous years visit the Link of the Week archive page.

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