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For many web teams — regardless of the industry — site accessibility remains a reactive issue. Too often, the drive to adjust site content to make it more accessible comes on the heels of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) complaints filed against the organization.

While that approach does ensure that the web continues to evolve toward a more accessible space for all users, it also ensures that process will be a slow, uphill battle for both users and content creators.

The ideal approach is to evaluate and adjust your own content proactively.

As marketers, our goal is to build trust with our constituents, and through that, develop a two-way, one-to-one relationship based on loyalty. We need to provide value to our constituents, so that they become our loyal advocates. But to do so, we need to know and understand them — with data at the source of this knowledge.

A website redesign can be an invigorating exercise for a college or university — people are excited about a new look, a new direction, and a new strategy.

But it can also be challenging to find the best way to engage internal audiences throughout the process. Common questions include:

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.

We surveyed marketing and communications professionals at 130 different higher education institutions to better understand the current state of higher education web teams. How are they structured? What skillsets are they adding? Are team sizes growing or shrinking?

We've analyzed the data to determine how higher education web teams are evolving, and what steps you can take to ensure your team is performing to its full potential. By filling out the form below, you'll receive immediate access to a wealth of information including:

When we audit and review a website before embarking on a website redesign project, we typically see a range of content issues, including:

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.