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In higher ed, resources are often tight. But there is one resource that we have in spades: students. In addition to their experiences, which provide endless fodder for content opportunities, students can also be invaluable resources in your communications office in helping manage your websites. They are motivated to gain professional expertise and bring a perspective close to that of your primary audience.

However, like any resource, student web workers should be managed purposefully. Here are some guidelines for ensuring that you maximize value from your student workers.

Some designers find inspiration just about everywhere, while others find themselves having to purposefully seek it out. With so many amazing, talented, creative people making mind-blowing art everyday and so many avenues for them to show it off, it’s not hard to find work to excite and motivate you. If you’re looking for creative inspiration, start with these folks who are pioneers making their mark in the design world.

Jon Contino

When you’re going about your online visits, checking out websites for shopping, reading, information gathering, or just having a bit of fun, it’s easy to tell which of those sites had a user experience designer as part of the creative process. You can bet a usability expert played a big role in building the sites that are easy to navigate, keep you interested and engaged, and make you want to come back.

As more colleges and universities launch comprehensive fundraising campaigns, stand alone campaign websites are increasing in number and growing in complexity. These sites are becoming critical communications tools that are an integral part of a capital campaign.

Planning Your Capital Campaign Website

How donors interact and use a capital campaign website changes over time. We’ve identified three key phases for the capital campaign. Your website should be designed to be a primary communication tool in each phase:

We all love a good hack. Something to make our workdays easier and our workflows more efficient. One of the best parts of finding a cool, new app, extension, or tool is sharing it with others and knowing that they too can bask in the glory of an easier worklife. And so, we’re sharing our favorite Chrome extensions (seriously, we use these pretty much on a daily basis) for UX designers, but don’t worry, you don’t have to be a UX designer to use and love them. Let the basking begin.

If it’s your first time going through a website redesign process or if you’re new to website management, there is a lot of new terminology to get a handle on. Learning a little bit of “web developer speak” will go a long way toward making sure your entire team is on the same page, and the outcomes of your website project match your expectations.

Knowing the difference between these four basic development issues is a great start toward making you a web developer’s best friend, so let’s dive right in.

If you're thinking about improving your website, you should be thinking about content strategy. Simply put, content strategy means getting purposeful about your content and creating habits that support its ongoing success.

After years and years of trying to convince people that your website needs a major overhaul, the company has finally given the green light on a website redesign project. Congratulations! But buyer beware: there are a plethora of elements to consider when embarking on this lengthy adventure. Here are some of the things you should look to avoid during this process, explained in GIFs.

Marketers have a big job trying to keep up with the ever-changing, ever-growing landscape of trends, technologies, tools, and platforms. They are continually challenged to deliver more with less and faster so identifying which marketing strategies will have the biggest impact on their business in the coming year is a must in order to create digital marketing plans that deliver.

With that in mind, here are five trends (some you’ve definitely heard of before and some you’ll need to get familiar with quickly) you need to know about going into 2016:

While a capital campaign can take a college or university years to plan, the website supporting the campaign is often rushed out the door at the last minute. The website serves as the digital face for the capital campaign, so it’s important to make sure you have plenty of time to get it right. As you’re thinking about launching a capital campaign, here are 5 questions to ask your team.