Pick Your Favorites: 36 Easy-to-Scan Alumni Success Stories from The College of Wooster
Most colleges and universities have created content to present success stories about their alumni. And many rely on one or a few “hero” stories as the page opens to get visitors’ attention. From the perspective of marketing to potential students, that’s risky. It relies overly much on the one or two or three stories that are seen first being of interest to those possible future students.
The College of Wooster takes a different… and better… approach. Just after an introductory video, visits can easily scan 36 different stories presented under 12 headings for post-graduation success:
- Non-profit
- Journalism
- The arts
- Public service
- Medicine
- Entrepreneurship
- Business
- Education
- Sports
- Finance
- Law
- Graduate School
The mix of areas here is strong. Potential students will be more intersted in some areas than others. The presentation style makes it easy for impatient web visitors to find the content that’s most relevant to their college plans.
Notes for higher impact…
- Not all the story links bring people to a text presentation with subheads or bullet points. That’s a classic “writing right for the web” violation that prevents people from first scanning the page in 5 seconds or so for strong story highlights. Easy enough to add subheads (and bullet points) to the stories that now lack them. Don’t rely on a “text only” approach.
- Videos are used to tell four of the stories. These are well done in that they seem natural, believable… not overly scripted in PR style promotions. Be interesting to use analytics to see if people who open the video pages stay for the entire video (3 are under 3 minutes and one is between 3-4 minutes) and compare that with results on the text pages. If videos are stronger, that will set future content strategy.
- Only 8 of the 36 stories are from alumni who graduated in 2010 or later. Future planning might aim for something closer to a 50-50 split between those from more recent alumni and those from further back.
On Mobile… download speed is “Fair”
Google Test My Site gives a “Fair” rating for a 7 second mobile download speed, with a estimated visitor loss of 26 percent.
Follow the Link of the Week…
Review 36 easy-to-scan alumni story possibilities and visit those that interest you the most at Alumni Stories from The College of Wooster.
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