Common Pitfalls of Higher Education Websites
Improving yield starts at first contact
Personalization strategies for admissions offices are now status quo and seek to develop a relationship too far into the prospect journey. Very often, the first experience a prospect will have with your institution will be through your website. That courtship should initiate at first click through meticulous consideration of people and objectives in variable contexts. If that sounds challenging, well, it absolutely can be. Which is why being mindful of these frequently overlooked details can make a difference.
#1: Accessibility
As I’ve previously written: web accessibility just makes good business sense. Moreover, accessibility in the context of web applications are an all-too-commonly neglected moral imperative that is rapidly becoming a legal mandate. Lawsuits filed under Title III of the ADA have more than doubled in the last 5 years and a significant fraction of those are class action suits. Even Harvard and MIT have been targeted.
Hundreds of colleges and universities across the country are currently under investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights for failing to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities.
— Inside HigherEd
Basically, if accessibility hasn’t been your institution’s priority, it needs to be.
What to look for
While a robust accessibility audit is the only way to ensure thorough compliance, even a novice can identify some red flags. The most common problems are contrast issues from deficient or misapplied brand standards and generic link labelling (e.g., Learn more) problems. Also, be aware that automated testing only helps target the former issue, not the latter, so an error-free report from your Axe browser plugin doesn’t confirm your site as accessible.
Contrast must meet a minimum ratio of 4.5:1 to achieve AA compliance. Legibility suffers in low-contrast designs and increases the cognitive strain, which is a serious deficiency for prominent calls-to-action (CTA). For example, compare the following websites:
While the low-contrast view may be barely legible to you, for many it is not.
The common mistake is confusing a design that looks appealing with one that is accessible.
Generic link labels are a copywriting crutch that fail to successfully describe the purpose of the link in context. Moreover, screenreader users will often skim between links, skipping sections of text; repetitions of “learn more, learn more, learn more, learn more” are meaningless and obnoxious.
The common mistake is assuming all users interpret context the same way.
Why this matters
11% of undergrads, 8% of master’s students and 7% of doctoral students report being affected by a disability. This year, students broke the Common Applications’s record with 1,956,541 applications submitted from 610,919 unique applicants, a spike which marked a 20% increase from 2016. That alone correlates to a potential applicant pool of over 67,000 prospects living with some type of disability.
While accessibility may not in and of itself be a motivating factor to a prospect entering your sales funnel or following your prospect journey, improving accessibility lowers the barrier to entry for a substantially large group of applicants already motivated to take the next step. Moreover, considering yield rates are multifactorial, rates for that cohort is likely to be higher for accepted students who feel your institution takes their disability seriously.
#2: Visual focus
Establishing a deliberate visual hierarchy with obvious CTAs are critical to directing prospects into the sales funnel. This can take numerous forms (i.e., white space, information hierarchy, scanning patterns) and should be considered at every level of page depth. Simply put, prospects will struggle to follow a confusing prospect journey, so every element should have purpose.
What to look for
A Z-shaped pattern — as opposed to an F-shaped pattern for content pages — naturally leads the eye to a focal point (commonly a CTA).
The common mistake is being overly verbose. Superfluous copy that adds little new information distracts attention from your brand story and obstructs prospects from their intended path.
Furthermore, consider the highly non-scientific “squint test” to decipher the intended priority on the following examples:
The common mistake is not visually guiding users into your prospect journey. When everything is prioritized, nothing is.
Why this matters
Trust. Visual simplicity and prototypicality (i.e., the use of expected design conventions within a sector) have been demonstrated as more aesthetically desirable and good design is a principal trust factor. Moreover, concentrated attention on other substantive trust factors (e.g., thought leadership, success stories) carries a high psychological return value.
Quite simply, a cohesive narrative advances a clear value proposition. Over 70% of students include “reputation”, “value of education” and “feeling of fit” as important final factors to their enrollment decision; all of which relate to building a foundation of trust in your institution. Simplifying your design and your narrative will not only strengthen your brand perception, but, most importantly, increase traffic through your prospect journey and ultimately improve your yield.
#3: Mobile experience
The importance of a fulfilling mobile experience to an effective marketing strategy cannot be understated. Especially considering that 59% of prospects access college sites on mobile devices at least once a week. However, mobile device users have pointedly different objectives compared to users of other device types, so your mobile experience needs to be more considered than just a miniaturized version of the desktop site.
What to look for
The reduction or removal of image content will fundamentally alter the narrative, and not necessarily for the better. Images are a unique type of content in that they have inherent height and width values. As the display device size reduces, images will proportionally scale down to fit in the available space. Consider the following comparison:
In this case, the ostensible purpose of the hero is to leverage high-quality imagery of the campus to build an emotional trust factor with prospects. The photograph is arguably the indispensable element of this appeal. However, when scaled down, without consideration for device context, the image is practically non-existent, defeating the purpose of the appeal.
The common mistake is assuming responsive scaling alone is a comprehensive solution and not one tool of many. In fact, CSS is pretty smart nowadays in articulating how a visual element should respond to the dimensions of its content box.
Additionally, the effect of the order of page elements on smaller devices is often ill considered. The following is a typical example of some content markup:
<main class="my-content">
<div class="my-content__banner">Hero image</div>
<aside class="my-content__aside">Helpful links</aside>
<article class="my-content__main">Trust factors/Call to action</article>
</main>That markup might translate into a display such as this:
While the default stacking of page elements for mobile breakpoints is not wrong per se, the common mistake is assuming the default order is considerate of your priorities.
Reversing the flow of elements is not necessarily the silver bullet here either. The only legitimate solution is careful consideration of your marketing objectives for each persona within multiple device contexts.
Why this matters
85% of undergraduate prospects research an institution on a mobile device. Yet, the prospect journey to application submission is still highly fragmented, with only 13% submitting an application through a mobile device. The key takeaway is prospects are using mobile devices as a part of their initial screening process, but continue their journey through other channels. Those initial interactions are critical opportunities to build trust by catering to the informational needs of that context (i.e., basic information like programs and tuition), develop brand loyalty through storytelling and emphasize a lower-barrier CTA (e.g., “Request Info”) over “Apply Now.”
These may seem like inconsequential concerns given the scope of all the audiences your website needs to reach. For the elite companies of the world, good branding exists in the minutiae and is also invisible. In that frame of reference, no level of detail should be irrelevant when the objective is establishment of a lifelong, prospect-thru-alumni relationship. Consider the needs of your prospects with every opportunity offered, especially that first moment.
