“25 Best University Websites for 2018” That’s the misleading title of a Tweet that took me to an article by Jay Baer, “founder of Convince & Convert, a digital marketing company.” Why is the title misleading? Baer reviewed websites at the 50 largest public universities in the U.S. From those, 25 were selected as ‘best” […]
Slow Websites Lose Visitors… No Matter How Many Awards are Won Everyone like to win design awards. Especially the agencies that win client awards for creative advertising campaigns. And creative websites. And clients deserve to celebrate awards that recognize the effort that inevitably goes into creating a new site. But alas, when “the need for […]
Keeping Faculty, Staff, and Students Up-to-Date on Web Activities Colleges and universities often face special challenges in keeping people within the institution up-to-date on ongoing events related to website design and content. And given the eternal resistance to change, a lack of ongoing communications can result in resistance to the need for continuing quality improvements. […]
Rare Attention to Speed at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications: 3 Second Mobile Download One element puts the Medill School into the Link of the Week selection category: Mobile download speed. At a time when most colleges and universities are not paying much attention to the value of speed in the […]
Student Recruitment, Top Tasks, and Content Strategy Each September since 2006 Gerry McGovern has assembled his Carewords partners for two days of reflection, strategizing, and planning for the new year on how to best advance the “top tasks” philosophy. Top Task Philosophy… A Different Marketing Approach “Top tasks” is a philosophy… for website design and […]
Professional School Programs: Easy-to-Scan 9 Options Available People interested in a professional school’s areas of study have the same top tasks as any potential student: Find the programs available and get more information about the program(s) of interest. The University of Rochester School of Nursing makes that easy to do by using 9 large content […]
Home Page Navigation Highlights 25 Task Links Most higher education home pages still use audience-based navigation on the home page and throughout the site: Prospective Students, Current Students, Alumni, Faculty & Starr. Most website visitors, however, are not looking for a particular audience. Instead, they have a task in mind and want to complete it […]
Xavier University Story Continues: Creating the Most Distinctive Home Page in Higher Education Last week I presented the first two answers to questions I sent along last year to Xavier to learn more about how they decided to position a “Search” box and the dominant feature of the university’s home page. Here today are the […]
Connect in 5 Seconds or Less to Create Marketing Strength Yes, you have 5 seconds or less when a web page opens to make a connection with someone visiting that page. People have to immediately see something they understand and that “something” had best be based on a top task the visitors want to complete. […]
Have you been as amused as I have been about the alarms these last few weeks during the build-up to Google’s April 21 change to mobile-search ranking results? Did you believe that a devastating “mobilegeddon” was descending upon us? Yes, the change is important. No, it will not destroy your student recruitment results or your brand […]
Blowing the doors off university website design: innovation run wild at Bucknell A couple of weeks ago someone posted a request on a higher education listserv… Could anyone recommend a firm to create a website design that would “blow the doors off” other university sites? One of the first people to respond used a new […]
Marketing strength in website design: don’t try to “Blow the doors off” Last week on a Listserv for university web developers someone asked for recommendations for design firms whose work would “blow the doors off” typical higher education websites. The request caught my attention. What were university websites that fit the “blow the doors off” […]