5 Student Personas For Your Higher Education Website

Website Testing as an Ongoing Process

Website testing should always be a core part of website maintenance and development. It’s not just something you do once before launch; it’s an ongoing process that ensures your website stays functional, user-friendly, and effective in meeting your users' needs. The methods for testing can vary, but we highly recommend starting with a user persona exercise.

1. Create User Personas

A user persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your target audience. It is based on real data from your website and analytics, user research, as well as best practices and (ideally) informed assumptions. Creating user personas helps guide design and content decisions to make sure your website caters to the needs and behaviors of your users.

How to Group Your Users into Meaningful Personas

To begin, you need to group your users into meaningful categories based on common traits. Consider the following factors:

• Who are they? What are the defining demographic or psychographic characteristics of these users?
• What are they trying to accomplish? What tasks are they looking to complete when they visit your site?
• How old are they? Are they young adults, working professionals, or retirees?
• Where do they live? 
• What language(s) do they speak? 

Example: A University Website’s Persona

Consider a university website analyzing its analytics and discovering that a significant portion of prospective students are aged 16-20 and hail from urban areas. These Urban Young Adults can form one of the key personas. To better cater to their interests, the website might prioritize content that highlights vibrant campus life, proximity to urban amenities, and strong career opportunities in the city.

2. Stress Test Your Personas

Once you've created user personas, it's essential to stress-test them under various conditions. Consider these additional factors:

• Comfort with technology. Is your persona tech-savvy, or do they require more guidance to navigate the website?
• Emotional state. Is your persona relaxed and leisurely browsing, or are they stressed and in a rush to complete a task?
• Place in the conversion cycle. Are they in the awareness, consideration, or decision phase of engaging with your business or service?
• Method of access to your website. Are they browsing on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device? Do they have a reliable internet connection, or are they using your website on the go?

Giving Personas Names

To make user personas more tangible, give them names and personalities. While this might feel silly, it is a great tool, especially if you’re working on a project with multiple stakeholders. It brings these characters to life, making it easier to design with them in mind.

For instance, you might create "Snapchat Sally," a tech-savvy 20-something, or "Working Wanda," a busy working student balancing a full-time job and school. These personas make the discussion more concrete and relatable during brainstorming sessions.

Persona Development Across Industries

This method of developing and testing user personas can be applied across industries. Let’s take a closer look at how user personas can transform the user experience (UX) in the higher education sector.

Snapchat Sally

Demographically, this persona is likely in the 18-30 year old range. They are social-media savvy and comfortable accessing information on their mobile device. And, most importantly, they expect their information now, now, now. If they can’t find what they are looking for on your site, they will give up quickly and revert to Google or Twitter to find the answer. Or worse, they will go to your competitor. 

What changes when Snapchat Sally is doing research as a potential student vs. when they are a fully enrolled and active student? You’ll need to put yourself in the shoes of each persona at different points in your conversion cycle. Ideally, you should be putting each test through a “worst-case scenario lens” - you’ll be amazed at how small tweaks can make a huge impact in a moment where your user is in less than the ideal state of mind. 

Top Considerations: A mobile-friendly version of your website that prominently offers access to your social accounts, which need to be actively monitored.

Continuing Ed(ward)

Continuing education is a perfect example of why you need more than one persona group. When you picture a continuing ed student, what age are they? Where are they in their life, or in their career? Continuing education students, like most student groupings, vary widely. Some may be taking on second careers, some may have never attended a post-secondary institution. Some may have young families at home while others are retirees. 

With so much diversity, what assumptions can we make? Whether Continuing Ed is a senior with limited comfort with technology or a young person trying out classes before committing to a full program, both will be looking for a low barrier experience, especially as competition between schools becomes even tougher. 

Top Considerations: Simple interfaces and easy access to help, either live through a social media or chat function, or contextually placed based on task.

Working Wanda

It can be easy to think of user groups in terms of stock photography; the idyllic young student lounging on a campus lawn in designer clothes with their nose in a book and a coffee close at hand. But this kind of thinking will lead you to miss the mark. 

A 2015 study by Georgetown University found that 70-80% of American students were also working. About 25% of full-time students are also working full-time; 40% of undergraduates and 76% of graduate students are working a minimum of 30 hours a week. With the rising costs of education, this might not be a surprise, but what should you change to accommodate this growing group? 

If you were juggling that kind of calendar (and at those percentages, maybe you are), what tools could you really use as part of an integrated higher ed digital experience? How about quick save options inside a posted syllabus to add due dates to your Google or iCalendar? What about a customized tool that allows students to measure progress and hit goal milestones in a course or assignment? Or time management tips as part of the login process for a student portal? 

Top Considerations: Integration points for more effective time management. By putting yourself in their shoes, you can make improvements that will help all of your user groups.

Parent Pat

For those students who are coming directly from high school, their parents may be the driving force (or at least be casting a vote) in which school is right for their child’s next step. At the very least, a parent might be the one tracking down address and contact information for a tour or campus visit. A good online experience may help tip the scales in your favour when decision time comes - or at least avoid leaving a bad taste in Mom or Dad’s mouth. 

Parents doing research on behalf of a prospective student will have different topics they are interested in: safety, graduation rates, employment rates after graduation, and cost come to mind. It isn’t that other users won’t want this information as well, but the lens of a parent will be slightly different. 

Top Considerations: Consider adding content tailored to a parent’s point of view, such as student safety. Present the content in a way that aligns with the parental perspective.

Second-Language Sam

The National Center for Educational Statistics in the U.S. reports that an estimated 4.5 million public school students are English language learners. If your school serves a particular second language, consider maintaining your site in both languages. Remember, these groups can also overlap - what changes if Parent Pat is also a Second-Language Sam? 

Be sure to highlight programs or processes on your website already in place to help overcome language barriers such as tutoring or multi-lingual support staff. Consider some natural areas of overlap - if you have content geared towards international students, language support should appear in those spots. 

Top Considerations: Multi-language support both in online formats and offline. Make sure the option to switch to a secondary language is prominent and easy to find in your site layout.

Final Thoughts: Balancing User Segments

As non-traditional students become more common, embracing user grouping strategies is crucial to address diverse needs. Starting with simple groupings and adding complexity enhances engagement. It's essential to ensure design for one group doesn't compromise others, allowing educational websites to be inclusive and effective.

If you need help identifying user personas or optimizing your website for better performance, we’re here to assist. Reach out to learn how we can support your ongoing web development efforts.