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Haven’t made the move from HTTP to HTTPS yet? You’re not alone, but it’s time.

The good news is that over one-third of the top 1 million websites use SSL by default, an increase of 150% in the last year, according to BuiltWith. The bad news? That still leaves two thirds of the top websites using a less secure protocol.

When we kick off a website redesign project with a client, one of the first things we discuss is an area where the bulk of the work might not happen for months down the line. That’s right, I’m talking about content.

To be frank, it can be a scary conversation. With these kinds of projects, the content expectations can be daunting — especially if you wait to think about it until you are well into the design phase. By that point, a significant number of content decisions have already been made, and you’ll end up in a tight spot if you don’t have a plan for how to address them.

As we head into 2018, it’s time for our fourth annual report on Google Analytics benchmarks for college and university websites. We reviewed traffic from a wide range of college and university websites — graduate programs, universities, liberal arts colleges, adult programs, and law schools — from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. When available, we looked at only external traffic sources to get the best reads on how prospective students and alumni are experiencing the website.

A new year brings new enthusiasm to accomplish some of the biggest challenges in the field of higher education. From artificial intelligence to big data, the industry is being hit with buzzword after buzzword, as we weed through the trends to unearth solutions that will bring the industry to the next level.

With the help of insights from higher ed marketing executives and CMOs, we pulled together a list of digital marketing priorities for the new year.

It can sometimes be difficult to know if the way you’ve structured your team is the “right” way. For most, whether you are meeting your internal goals and rising to the demands of your institution is the only method to measure. There’s no real, concrete way to compare your own structure and your own success against that of the rest of the industry.

We wanted to change that.

The next generation of CMOs are digitally fluent and data-driven, critically analyzing marketing solutions to bring integrated campaigns forward, and motivating teams and peers through the power of data. Above all else, they’re "connected."

Throughout this year’s American Marketing Association (AM) Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education — appropriately titled CONNECTED — senior marketing leaders united to discuss the new and improved ways their institutions can attract, engage, nurture, and retain their audiences using digital channels.

When it comes to acquiring new patients, market research shows digital channels strongly topping referral and print acquistion strategies. One survey reports 76% of prospective patients use digital channels to select a care provider. If you want to improve conversion from your hospital website, streamlining your website to align to prospective patient needs is a necessary step.

“I’m not a technical person” is perhaps my least favorite excuse for avoiding new tools and trends. Working in web development, and being the person who is in charge of introducing my clients to new technologies and strategies, I hear this line almost daily.

Although it can be frustrating to hear, I know what people are actually saying when they tell me they are “not a technical person.” They mean: “I won’t understand this.”

In a quest to connect and engage with prospective students, college and university marketing teams are turning to student social media takeovers of official social media accounts. These first-person, student produced narratives help schools to tell stories from new angles, to present an authentic, unmoderated perspective, and to grow their audiences.

Three experts on the topic shared their experiences and processes for letting students take the reigns during a panel at the annual CCA conference:

Do you ever feel like your website is a mess?

It’s like a cluttered garage that you wish someone else would just clean out–get rid of the trash, sweep it out, and put anything of value back on some nice shiny shelves.

You could turn around, walk away, hire an agency, and tell them — fix it!

But, it’s your job to clean it out.

To help you dive in, we’ve outlined a seven-point action plan — if you follow it, you’ll end up with a good understanding of what’s in your “garage” and some first thoughts on all of the key areas for a new website.