What follows is a thread of messages posted to the American Marketing Association’s Higher Education listserve about web design/redesign.
Initial Message:
Dear Colleagues -
Here at Saint Michael's College we are in the process of re-designing our Web site. I am wondering if any of you have had experience with the internal communications involved in sharing preliminary top-tier page designs with students, faculty and staff. I believe web site design shouldn't be done by committee (there are so many competing interests concerning what should be represented on our home page, for example) but at the same time we want to be sure we're allowing the opportunity for feedback from our community, which I hope will help create some buy-in.
Any advice, insight, or experienced words-of-wisdom would be appreciated! –Anne
Replies:
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Wendy Luljak
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 1:53 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Four years ago, I took on this task at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During the design phase, I obtained a number of initial designs and then had them refined. I then shared the final three designs with our department chairs and conducted small focus group studies with our Alumni Friends Board, as well as students (juniors) at local high schools. The feedback was invaluable, as each constituency had its own opinion on what appealed to them. All of this feedback was then used in the final design.
Don't forget the importance of homepage navigation as well. We often are so close to the subject areas that we forget how others, perhaps not familiar with education, will search for what is important to them.
You might also take into consideration how you probably will have to "tweak" the initial design down the road. We've done a number of minor enhancements to the site since its launch. Because of our initial design, we were able to add navigation and other items of interest while keeping the core design of the homepage and subpages.
The most important consideration is to determine the needs of your primary audience. make sure their needs are met and then appeal to any secondary objectives you might have. A clear set of goals, objectives and priorites developed at the onset helped me greatly through the entire 18 month phase from vendor selection to launch.
Good luck!
DeAnna
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Wendy Luljak
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 1:53 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Four years ago, I took on this task at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During the design phase, I obtained a number of initial designs and then had them refined. I then shared the final three designs with our department chairs and conducted small focus group studies with our Alumni Friends Board, as well as students (juniors) at local high schools. The feedback was invaluable, as each constituency had its own opinion on what appealed to them. All of this feedback was then used in the final design.
Don't forget the importance of homepage navigation as well. We often are so close to the subject areas that we forget how others, perhaps not familiar with education, will search for what is important to them.
You might also take into consideration how you probably will have to "tweak" the initial design down the road. We've done a number of minor enhancements to the site since its launch. Because of our initial design, we were able to add navigation and other items of interest while keeping the core design of the homepage and subpages.
The most important consideration is to determine the needs of your primary audience. make sure their needs are met and then appeal to any secondary objectives you might have. A clear set of goals, objectives and priorites developed at the onset helped me greatly through the entire 18 month phase from vendor selection to launch.
Good luck!
--
Terry M. Bush
Executive Director
Marketing and Communication
Northeastern Illinois University
Chicago, Illinois
773.442.4200
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Marshall Collins
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 4:12 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
At the University of Colorado's Denver campus, I had to weigh the independence of faculty and staff who desired to control their unit sites and the needs of the campus for a consistently operational system that would provide brand identity. We put in place a content management system that allowed both novices and experts to engage web development under a multiple component design structure. In kicking off the process, I had a small task force representing each campus component come to a conclusion regarding the implementation strategy, such as the content management structure. Through the course of months, the work on the project was open to comment through town hall style meetings where those who had interest were able to voice opinions. At these meetings we were able to not only bring forth suggestions, but also answer the capabilities of our IT system, the feasibility of employing various suggestions, and the life cycle of various design components. A very democratic process in its early stages. Although many had individual desires regarding look and feel, by having open forums we were able to evaluate these suggestions. No, it didn't become committee designed, but campuswide embraced. I'd say that only you can determine the corporate culture of your university and embark on the best approach. Much depends upon what unit or units are in charge of development, implementation and maintenance of your site.
Marshall Collins, Managing Director
Nexus MarCom Group
Frisco, Texas
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Ron Morris
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 2:01 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Anne,
I have been involved in higher ed Web site design research for the past
three years. The project I am involved with evaluates almost 3,000
college and university Web sites. The research is objective in nature,
focusing solely on the presence or absence of specific site criteria.
What we have discovered is that attractive graphics and colors are
almost totally irrelevant to high school students. So to the extent
that you are addressing the admissions function of your site, focus
almost exclusively on functionality and navigational ease.
By the way, don't mess with your site too much. Your ranking out of
2,992 sites evaluated was #119. That's pretty good. But because your
score was only 76.41 out of 100, you've still got room for improvement.
If you would like a checklist to insure that your site will be
successful with this audience, check out the NRCCUA EPI research. The
40 weighted criteria that emerged from the research explain over 88% of
the variance in high school students' evaluation of site quality.
Ron Morris
Center for Enrollment Leadership
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Smith,Beth L
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 4:44 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
How can we determine where we rank in this study, and details on the criteria high school students want?
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Ron Morris
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 10:30 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
University of Akron ranked 1,391 out of 2,992 with a score of 62.51 out
of 100.
To get the full report on your institution, with a list of the 40
criteria and comparative rankings, you'll need to purchase the EPI
report and recommendations. It is available at
You can also see a listing of the top 100 there.
Ron Morris
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On Behalf Of Craig Field
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 11:29 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Hi Anne,
I have been involved in 3 website redesigns and 1 intranet redesign, one in
the corporate sector and the rest in education, and having a website done by
committee, which you know already, means delays and to many differences of
opinion to ever get the thing done and out there. You need feedback so
people feel involved, but you need limitations.
For the home page, we developed the sites by giving a small selected group 3
top level design options to chose from and a demo of what a lower tier page
would look like. They then added their comments about it and these
incorporated into the design.
We had people who are good at information flow map out the initial site
navigation. Marketing and Communications wrote the top levels of the website
information according to the markets looking at that areas information and
this ensured that the information was brief and to the point. We then got
department heads to look at the content we had written and put a word limit
on what they could write if they were not happy with it. As you can't put
all information about business for example in a short paragraph or 2, each
page had a link for more detailed information which took them to the
business program's website. It was here, and we stress this often to
department heads, that they may place any amount of content they like. You
have given them limited input, but a chance to say whatever they want on
their own pages.
When the site is launched we ask people for feedback about the website
through an all staff and student email. This will give valuable information
from multiple users and highlight things you may have overlooked. We also
monitor the webstats software - we use webtrends - to see where people are
going and monitor the search engine queries - if you have a good search
engine it should be able to provide statistics on what people are searching
for. If you get to many people looking for student services, then it is not
in an obvious enough spot and you should move it and see what happens.
After about 6 weeks, when all have had a chance to really look through the
website and you have shifted some information around to better suit the
users needs, we undertake a survey to see what people think of the website.
This is a method that has worked for me here and one that I am using again
at the moment for the next project.
Regards
Craig Field
Marketing and Communications Manager
Higher Colleges of Technology
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Here are the top 10. If you want to see all in the top 100, go to:
1FordhamUniversity, Bronx NY
2Ohio Northern University, Ada OH
3 St.AmbroseUniversity, Davenport IA
4 ClaytonCollege & StateUniversity, Morrow GA
5 George Washington University, Washington DC
6 The University of Iowa, Iowa City IA
7 University of Missouri - Columbia, Columbia MO
8 HamiltonCollege, Clinton NY
9 ChristopherNewportUniversity, Newport News VA
10 BradleyUniversity, Peoria IL
Ron
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On
Behalf Of Tristan Davies
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 12:02 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Ron or anyone else-- can you share who was #1, or maybe even the top 5
or 10?
Thanks, by the way, for your prompt reply to my query at the AMA
conference in San Diego!
And for those who are keeping tabs, was number 246.
Tristan Davies
Director of University Communications
DruryUniversity, Springfield, Mo.
417.873.7276
On 2/7/05 11:26 AM, "Ron Morris" <>
wrote:
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
CentralCollege ranked 748 out of 2,992. Your score was 68.38 out of
100.
A comment to all about this research: While the ranking is
interesting,
the real value in the research lies in the 40 criteria that form a
checklist for a quality site. Many institutions that have used the
report as part of a redesign effort have told us that it has been an
invaluable tool in the process. An objective checklist eliminates a
lot
of opinions from people on campus that think they alone know exactly
what should be on the site.
It is hard for academics to argue with well done research.
Ron
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On
Behalf Of Connie Cross
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:38 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
This is the "me too" syndrome. I'm wondering where CentralCollege,
Pella, Iowa, is in the ranking?
Connie Cross
Director of College Relations
CentralCollege
Pella, IA
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On
Behalf Of Catherine Herman
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 7:59 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Like Beth, I'm wondering how the University at Albany can determine
where rank in this study. Thanks much.
Catherine Herman
Assoc. V.P.
Media & Marketing
University at Albany
Albany, NY
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto: On
Behalf Of Smith,Beth L
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 5:44 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
How can we determine where we rank in this study, and details on the
criteria high school students want?
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG on behalf of Ron Morris
Sent: Fri 2/4/2005 3:00 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject: Re: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Anne,
I have been involved in higher ed Web site design research for the
past
three years. The project I am involved with evaluates almost
3,000
college and university Web sites. The research is objective in
nature,
focusing solely on the presence or absence of specific site
criteria.
What we have discovered is that attractive graphics and colors are
almost totally irrelevant to high school students. So to the
extent
that you are addressing the admissions function of your site,
focus
almost exclusively on functionality and navigational ease.
By the way, don't mess with your site too much. Your ranking out of
2,992 sites evaluated was #119. That's pretty good. But
because
your
score was only 76.41 out of 100, you've still got room for
improvement.
If you would like a checklist to insure that your site will be
successful with this audience, check out the NRCCUA EPI research.
The
40 weighted criteria that emerged from the research explain over
88%
of
the variance in high school students' evaluation of site
quality.
Ron Morris
Center for Enrollment Leadership
-----Original Message-----
From: Higher Education Marketing SIG [mailto:
On
Behalf Of Anne Conaway Peters
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 3:12 PM
To:
Subject: [HIGHEREDSIG] Web site redesign
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
Dear Colleagues -
Here at Saint Michael's College we are in the process of re-designing
our
Web site. I am wondering if any of you have had experience with
the
internal communications involved in sharing preliminary top-tier
page
designs with students, faculty and staff. I believe web site
design
shouldn't be done by committee (there are so many competing
interests
concerning what should be represented on our home page, for
example)
but
at
the same time we want to be sure we're allowing the opportunity
for
feedback from our community, which I hope will help create some
buy-in.
Any advice, insight, or experienced words-of-wisdom would be
appreciated! --Anne
Anne Conaway Peters
Director of Marketing
Saint Michael's College
OneWinooskiPark, Box 7
Colchester, Vermont05439
802.654.2487
802.654.2774 fax
American Marketing Association
Higher Education Marketing Shared Interest Group
A clarification: The research does not measure perception. It
identifies if a site has or does not have specific functional elements.
These functional elements (40 specific criteria) are weighted based on
correlation to student ratings of the admissions Web sites done by over
3,000 students nationwide. If your institution's site has the
functional element it gets the points, if not it gets a 0. Fordham was
the number 1 site, but they only got a total score of 83.44 out of 100
possible. To me that's a B.
Here are examples of the criteria:
Does the main admission's page follow the same design as the
school's homepage (format/layout)?
Are there links to information on the community/city
in which the college is located?
Are there links to information on tuition and fee costs?
Those may sound like common sense, but you'd be surprised how many sites
miss quite a bit of information the students want.
We validated the research by running a multiple regression analysis and
it came back with an adjusted r-squared of .88, i.e. the formula
explains 88% of the variance in how students judge the overall quality
of the site. One admissions researcher told me they had never seen
anything over about a .65, so we're pretty proud of the accuracy of the
research.