Here are two reasons conversion optimization is probably a waste of money for your school, plus three processes you might try instead.   We’ve said before that your .edu site is for prospective students. Moving them from “silent consideration” to “ready-to-apply” is a critical challenge. And when you’re trying to squeeze every last precious application […]

DIY analytics is a good thing. It’s good that people are learning to unfold data, ask questions of it, to describe their work and activities with more accuracy. But easy accessibility brings challenges, too. There is still a learning curve for analytics practitioners, and there is a risk of misidentifying trends or attributing outcomes to the wrong activities. It happens because these newly-minted data professionals aren’t paying attention, or they don’t know better, or they see a [...]

When people struggle to use a website, it would be easy to think of the problems they encounter as “their own fault." They should understand the site better, why are they not looking in the right place? But to blame them would be like blaming the ceiling for getting covered in candle soot. Our job is to understand and respect their problems, so we can look for ways to mitigate them. When we do that, they trust us more, we connect with them, and everyone wins.

Top colleges are finding that marketing personalization is key to unlocking more tours, more applications, and more deposits. In a 2016 study about marketing personalization, Accenture found that 65% of people are more likely to make a purchase if a brand shows them relevant information based on past activity. The exciting part is: we’ve now reached a point where the long-awaited dream of personalized marketing at scale is finally both possible and practical, even for small [...]

If your site passes these four tests, you're ready to launch. They say you can’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and that's absolutely true when it comes to launching your website. Artists know the anxiety of trying to create the ultimate expressive piece that will summarize all their feelings, passion, and motivation. The problem is that while you’re polishing and fine-tuning, the world keeps moving on without you.

Most schools do a pretty good job of using their website to convey information about their campus, classes and offerings, but fall short when it comes to learning from student website behavior and feedback. Here are a few ways you can leverage your website to better understand your users: Analytics The most obvious way to […]

John Gough, Shawn Hardy, and Dallin Harris discuss the question “Should your website be the cornerstone of your marketing effort? We talk about the way social media and search has changed user expectations over the last several years, what users expect and hope for in your website, and how to differentiate yourself locally and globally. […]

In the course of my work with brand managers, I’ve noticed a common set of complaints about web developers in general: we’re poor communicators, we seem to miss obvious details and we’re expensive. While I am sure there are some truly unreliable teams out there, I can’t help but think that a lot of this […]

We’re excited to announce our sponsorship at WPCampus this July 14-15 in Buffalo, NY. WPCampus has put together some great resources for the community, from their annual survey of WordPress use in higher education to the archive of content they’re amassing via in-person and digital conferences. They’re well on their way to meeting their stated […]

In this episode of Digital Strategy Notes, John Gough, Kyle Theisen, and Cory Crowley discuss the question “How do I make my website faster?” Website speed is important to users as they explore your site (conversion rates drop by 7% for every second of load time) as well as search engines like Google (that have […]