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On October 10, 2012, I’ll be presenting a webinar for college and university marketing and communications, admissions, and enrollment teams who are planning for a website redesign. The 1-hour session will highlight strategic and tactical best practices for planning and developing a new website that not only reaches but engages prospective students.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the topics and findings that I’ll cover.

Prospective Students: the Undergraduate vs. Graduate Audience

Pulling from 5-years of findings from student focus groups, I’ll talk about how undergraduate students and graduate students have fundamentally different approaches to researching and ultimately selecting a school. When reviewing a college or university website, prospective undergraduates ask an experience-based question: “What will it be like?” In contrast, prospective graduate students ask an outcomes-based question: “What will it do for me and my career?” I’ll discuss how these differing motivations require different strategies for site design and content organization.

Engage with video – start with the social, move to the serious

On the undergraduate side, we find it is best to have two types of video – social, light, feel-good videos that speak to the culture and experience of being a student and the more serious and academic videos that provide the differentiators that parents will want to hear. Our research shows that students typically like seeing that you have video on their first visit to the website, but they won’t watch the video – unless it seems social and fun. They’ll turn to video and especially more academic, traditional videos later in the decision making process – typically right before deciding to apply or before deciding to matriculate.

Establish Clear Calls to Action

One of the key findings from comparative research between “brick and mortar” schools and online schools is that the online schools are better at driving engagement through clear calls to action. The online schools offer multiple ways to connect – phone, e-mail, chat – and multiple on-ramps – download materials, get more information through e-mail, or attend a webinar. Low engagement schools put too much emphasis on the “Apply” button, and not enough emphasis on creating a recruitment program that offers intermediate steps to learn and to engage. Online schools are also typically better at using a “less is more” strategy when presenting information about their programs. By limiting the amount of content available on the website, prospects are compelled to reach out for more information and engage with the institution.

Join the Webinar

I hope you’ll join the session on October 10 at 12:00 PM. Click here to register.

Each attendee will receive a copy of OHO Interactive’s Higher-Education RFP planner: 60 Questions to Ask Before Writing Your RFP.

We've recently been working on a number of user experience design engagements focused on lead capture and registration forms. As we've been sitting down with users to review live sites and prototypes, we've seen our consistent recommendations for improving conversion reinforced.

• Is the messaging right? Before users even get to the form, they need to understand what you are offering. The content and images on the landing page must be clear.
• Do you need to educate users first? If you have a big brand or sell a commodity product (like auto insurance) you need to do less education of the consumer before pushing them to form. In some cases, you may need to let users learn more about your product or try before they buy.
• Show progress. Always let the users know how many steps are left – and keep it to 3 steps if possible.
• Reveal additional fields. It's best to not overwhelm users with big forms. We recommend revealing steps as information is collected.
• Provide motivation – you need to ask your users. Don't guess at what would motivate your users, ask them. Find out what they really want to receive or know. We find that data or information can be a powerful motivator – if it is personalized.

Find out more about our User Experience Design Practice

OHO Interactive is pleased to announce that it has been selected as the Interactive Agency for Norwich University's School of Graduate and Continuing Education to redevelop the school's website from the ground up.

The engagement will include extensive market research, information architecture, creative, messaging, interactive features and video production.

Websites for Online Universities

The site will promote the Masters degrees offered by Norwich University. The site will aim to promote the university and attract new students through new messaging, lead capture forms, and a fresh new visual design. OHO will partner with the marketing team at the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies and their marketing partner Embanet Compass.

Last night nearly 100 people gathered at Microsoft's NERD Center to celebrate World Usability Day. The event in Boston/Cambridge was one of 172 events that happened in 40+ countries.

Jason Smith from OHO Interactive spoke on making web application people love to use in his talk: "From Usability to Lovability." A group of researchers from Bentley University presented new research on using iPads in education.

Are you attending the Gilbane conference this fall? I hope you'll sit in on the panel I'll be speaking on, talking about usability in B2B. I'll be exploring how B2B expectations are changing, converging more and more with B2C practices, at the leading web and content management conference on November 30.  B2B marketing and usability are changing. The recent explosion of mobile devices and apps, combined with the  evolution of Web 2.0 have quickly raised the bar on usability expectations within the Enterprise. Corporate users of web sites and apps today compare their experiences to consumer products and services such as iPhone/iPad, Kayak, and Google. Today's marketers are scrambling to meet these growing user expectations. Join me, World Usability Day founder Elizabeth Rosenzweig, as well as other leading industry experts, for this interactive session on how to turn your B2B website or app into a a truly lovable "consumer"-like experience.

Last week, we talked about the engagement trajectory, and how customers have a tendency to move along a predictable path from noticing your social media presence to becoming true advocates for your brand on social media, actively participating in your online community.

Let’s look some more at how to move folks along that trajectory. The first step is to determine whether your brand has enough potential advocates out there to make the time right to build a community. Although community can be a great driver of awareness, loyalty, and ROI, not every brand has the brand equity needed to build a community around it. If you do, community makes sense as a strategy. If you don’t, you’ll best spend you time and efforts on other, more fruitful web efforts.

Listening is the key in determining if your brand has enough folks out there passionate enough about your brand that, if you build an online community, not only will they flock to it, but they’ll use it as a platform to engage with your company and other consumers.

The first place to look is your existing social media efforts. Look on your Facebook page:

• Are customers enthusiastically responding to your posts, adding content of their own, and engaging with each other? If so, then you have levels of engagement that could translate well into a dedicated online community.
• Look at other voice of the customer data, such as responses to emails, web analytics, and surveys. Do customers forward your email newsletter to friends often or tweet their favorite articles?
• How about your blog—does it get a lot of shares? And is traffic coming in from those shares?
• Do you get good response rates to your surveys, and do respondents share rich data in free-response questions?

If you’re answering yes to a lot of these questions, your customers are already engaged richly with your brand.  

Of course, it’s a big step from having an engaged blog readership or Facebook fan page to having a fully-functioning online community. It’s fortunately feasible to test whether you can expand the boundaries of your existing levels of engagement to something more along the levels you’ll need to sustain community: ramp up the calls to engagement on existing channels:

• Add contests and quizzes to your Facebook page.
• Invite reader contributions to your blog and email newsletter.
• Create Twitter contests and polls

If consumers respond enthusiastically to this new level of engagement, chances are, your brand may be ready for a branded community.

Next: getting consumers over the engagement line.

We're really excited about a new project we're working on right now: a new website for Roger Williams University, complete with another installation of our popular UniversityNOW media and communications center. The Bristol, R.I. school, ranked one of the top 10 comprehensive universities in the North by U.S. News & World Report, tapped OHO earlier this year to build them a new site, one that brings more social interactivity and fresh new look and feel.

Existing RWU website

Boston Society for Architects (BSA) launched the completely revamped architects.org website this evening. The site was developed by Design&Co and OHO Interactive. The site is built upon Acquia Drupal and includes integration with the association management tool produced by ACGI.

Congratulations to the team at BSA – Adam, John, Jon, and Dan!

Brandeis University partnered with OHO Interactive to launch two new websites: BrandeisNow and the Brandeis Magazine site. The sites mark a shift to publishing and archiving more content online to reach a wider audience.

The Brandeis Magazine website is the merger of two print magazines and accompanies the redesign print magazine. In addition to feature articles and department columns, the Magazine contains an extensive online class notes section. The Magazine will be published quarterly in print and online.

BrandeisNOW is the centralized hub for all of the news content for the university. It is targeted at the Brandeis community, student, parents, alumni, and the broader national audience. The site contains:

• Feature articles
• Extensive video content
• Slideshows
• News releases
• Upcoming events

Both sites were built on Hannon Hill Cascade CMS solution and on extremely aggressive timelines. OHO Interactive worked as the project lead with a team at the Office of Communications, and provided the following services:

• Information Architecture
• Visual Design
• HTML/CSS Javascript
• Cascade CMS Build
• Traning and Launch

A third web project is underway and due to launch later this fall – stay tuned.

The Actors Fund – a human services organization in New York and LA serving the entertainment industry – has engaged OHO Interactive to migrate their existing website from Plone CMS to Acquia Drupal. The site will also integrate with the Blackbaud suite of products including Raiser's Edge, Patron's Edge, and Patron's Edge online.

As part of the engagement, OHO is developing an enhanced resource database and working with the management team to overhaul the homepage to better represent the organization and balance the needs of the membership, services, and development departments.

Drupal will provide a more flexible platform for:

• updating and dismenating content
• improve capability for adding video to the site
• provide a stronger platform for the development of custom features
• enhancing cross-site promotion of content such as calendars and events
• better content tagging

The new site is slated to launch later this summer.

Tufts University in Boston, MA became the first selective university in the US to encourage prospective students to submit videos via YouTube as part of the admissions process.

According to report on Boston.com of the 15,436 applicants to Tufts this year, more than 6 percent submitted a video.

The videos provide an opportunity for students to personalize their admissions applications and highlight their unique abilities. While many schools have always encouraged supplemental material this is the first open call for YouTube videos.

Learn more about academic recruitment and social media.

Watch a selection of the videos submitted to Tufts.

Academic Recruitment 2.0

How are for-profit universities using social media, search engine optimzation, and online advertising to recruit students.

Watch the Presentation Now

We've seen an increased desire by clients to add mapping to their websites – but they usually don't ask for it that way.

Clients begin by seeking new ways to visualize their information and make it easier to sort through information. In other words, they are looking for ways to make the content more relevant to the user.

Google Maps and Professional Associations

Some examples – I sat in a meeting today with an large professional association where the executive director talked about the "fire hose" of data their current site provides. It's too much; it's not relevant. His quick solution – not a better search or filters or better information architecture – is to show people and businesses near the user.

In his mind, nearer to me = more relevant to me.

A map view of search results is the ideal way to present this information rather than a filtered list. Why? Because maps offer a visualization of information that is easy to scan – and scanning is the way we all read on a screen.

Plot Custom Data on a Google Map for Universities

Here's another example – we launched a website for Lesley University last fall. Lesley offers off-campus programs in 250 sites across the US. I knew this – but it wasn't until I saw all 250 sites plotted that I understood at glance where they offer classes.

• I could see the clusters of regions where they work
• I could quickly see how far I would need to drive to take a course
• Clicking on the map pin showed me only the course available at that site

What's essential here is that the prospective student is asking a number of questions about the degree program: cost, time commitment, value, and course material. A standard text search is good for finding courses by name, but this isn't the only important decision factor. In this case a map more quickly answers other questions – how far will I have to drive? does this fit into my life?

Google Maps API and Google Maps Mash Up

The Google Maps API provides a way to plot your data on the Google Maps base. Plus you can plot third-party geo-coded information – such as transit stops – to add more value to your users. In addition, your users can add data to your maps such as polygons and lines plus the supporting meta-data.

See Examples of Google Maps Mash Ups