Examples of innovative higher education web design and content strategy and development for student recruitment.

1. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 1
Provocative Innovations
in Higher Ed Web Design

2. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 2
1) The importance of web design
2) What makes an effective college website?
3) Provoking emotion to drive action
4) Functional doesn't need to be boring
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

3. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 3
 The just-released Noel-Levitz 2014 E-Recruiting Practices
Report confirms that website spending has increased in the
past two years, although only about half of four-year higher
ed institutions reported having a mobile-optimized site.
 With 71 percent of graduating high school seniors having viewed
college websites on mobile phones or tablets (and 43 percent of
teens exclusively mobile), mobile functionality needs to be a top
priority for every school.
 First impressions are critical when forming an opinion about
any brand and when it comes to evaluating higher education
institutions, study after study states that teenaged prospects
won't hesitate to abandon a poorly functioning website,
potentially eliminating that college from their application list.
1. The importance of web design
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

4. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 4
 The key is to approach web design strategically, from a long-
term, big picture perspective.
 Develop a navigational framework and content creation process that
is sufficiently flexible to evolve along with your organization.
 This may take a full redesign the first time around but if you plan it
correctly the infrastructure should be sustainable even as academic
offerings and user needs change.
 A website is a perpetual work in progress, so plan for constant
testing and regular updates. Identify what makes your school unique
and what your visitors are most interested in, then make it as easy
as possible for them to get there.
 One of the biggest challenges for higher ed web design is finding a
way to communicate the most relevant information without cluttering
the user experience. This means taking a hard look into Google
Analytics data for underperforming pages and cutting out redundant,
superfluous, outdated and conflicting content.
2. What makes an effective college website?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

5. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 5
 Put yourself in your prospect's shoes to inspire them to
conversion by providing easily scannable content, bold high-
quality photographs, and prominent calls to action.
 Your beautiful, modern look should be applied throughout the
website - not just the homepage - ensuring optimal engagement no
matter which page your visitors first land on.
 Responsive design automatically formats content to fit the user's
screen size, and it is even more imperative that clutter is eliminated
on mobile browsers for efficient task-driven action.
 The University of Ottawa's recently redesigned website has been lauded
for being particularly clean and simple, offering visitors only four
prominent links in the page's centre.
 Data-driven research suggested the top tasks for student recruitment
were "Find a program" and "Estimate costs", which are even more
prominent on their mobile-optimized site.
2. What makes an effective college website?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

6. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 6
 You want students to be excited about your school, alumni to
donate and prospects to sign up, so share that contagious
enthusiasm of your unique community with bold branding
and a sensual multimedia experience.
 More colleges are integrating visual content in interesting ways,
inspiring the emotions that result in action. Authentic images of
students on campus trumps stock photos every time.
 Increase interactivity with virtual tours and embedded videos,
delivering a visceral simulation of life at your college or university.
This is a quickly growing trend, as student searches for educational
terms on YouTube increased by 25 percent in the last quarter of
2013.
 As students sift through a multitude of higher education options, why
should they choose you? Of course, your programs, facilities, industry
recognition, instructors, placement rate, location or whatever else makes
you special should be emphasized, but some schools are attempting to
stand out from the crowd with provocative web design.
3. Provoking emotion to drive action
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

7. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 7
 Are you creating the most engaging site for your particular
target market or following the supposed best practices of
what everyone else is doing?
 Internal and external usability testing will tell you if you're on the right
track, especially with a more unconventional design, identifying slight
adjustments that can make all the difference in achieving intuitive
navigation.
 Furman University's website has a great look, full of
appealing pictures that capture their inspiring school spirit
yet anchored by a bookmark-style navigational menu on the
left that remains stationary wherever you are on the site.
 Visitors can "Experience Furman" by scrolling through an innovative
timeline-style posting list, familiar to any social media user, which
can be sorted according to news, events or social.
4. Functional doesn’t need to be boring
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design

8. Provocative Innovations in Higher Ed Web Design
Slide 8
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