Latest & Greatest Tips to Enhance Your Higher Ed Website’s Online Presence

Nov 27 2024

Is your website the driving engine of your higher ed institution and a powerful catalyst for its goals? Is it effectively attracting prospective students, inspiring alumni, and building a vibrant community? There are always new strategies to boost your website's impact and ensure the answer is a resounding "yes"! As a team that specializes in higher education website design & development, we are passionate about sharing useful tips that can help those in this sector.

We’ve previously shared a collection of best practices for higher education websites. However, time flies, and fresh perspectives and new ideas are always emerging. Being immersed in the vibrant environment of fast and lifelong learning within your own institution, you surely are aware of this. Today, we're excited to share the latest tips, drawn from the articles we've published this year.

Read on to discover:

the signs that can indicate your higher ed website might not be performing well
tips for getting support from your stakeholders for a new web development project
the 101 on creating specific student user personas
ways to maximize your website’s potential with Drupal
and more

Tips to get the most out of your higher education site

Discover the red flags (and how to turn them into green ones)

Let’s start with the common pitfalls of higher ed websites that prevent them from gaining momentum. We have analyzed this issue and described in detail the 5 signs that your website isn’t doing as great as it could be. Check the brief hints below then follow the link to read the full article:

Analytics reveal low engagement. Data doesn’t lie — if your bounce rate is high, conversion rates are low, or key pages aren’t getting traffic, it’s a sign your site may not be meeting user needs.
Your site is not mobile-friendly. Today, a significant portion of visitors access university websites via mobile devices. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, users may find it difficult to navigate your pages or view your content. A lack of responsive design can turn away prospective students before they’ve even started exploring.
Content updates are difficult and slow. Cumbersome content management can limit your team’s ability to share valuable content in time and detract them from marketing efforts. Many websites aren’t using a modern CMS that could streamline content workflows.
The design doesn’t focus on students. Many higher ed websites are organized around internal structures rather than student needs. Prospective students want quick access to information like course lists, admissions requirements, and campus life highlights, but this information is many clicks away from the homepage.
Content is disorganized or outdated. Over time, the accumulation of outdated pages, duplicate information, and inconsistencies can create a cluttered, confusing user experience and harm SEO. This is especially true if your content has been transferred from another website, if you manage tons of websites associated with your higher ed institution, and so on.

Do these issues sound familiar? Then it may be time to consider a website redesign. A refreshed site can engage prospective students, simplify management, and optimize the overall user experience.

Get buy-in for your new web development project

Launching a web development project can be a big leap. When it’s time to invest in a digital solution, you need to bear in mind a few specifics. It’s not only website design and development that will take some time — in the higher ed sphere, the decision-making process often involves a lot of collaboration and input from various stakeholders. This can stretch the timeline and make budget approval more challenging.

Our team of experts has you covered with our top tips for securing budget approval for your web project. Our Digital Experience Solutions Director B jorn Thomson, our Senior Technical Solutions Architect Dave Bezuidenhout, and our Digital Experience Solutions Architect C.J. Pagtakhan combined their efforts to provide three key tips. You can read the full article for more details but here they are in a nutshell:

Discover how budgeting works within your institution. This includes exploring whether your web project will be treated as a capital or operational expense, whether it’s possible to request donor or grant funding, and so on. It’s also a great idea to reach out to peer institutions to share their experiences.
Build a strong business case. If you’re pushing for a new website, it’s likely because your current one isn’t meeting your institution’s needs — so let your stakeholders know exactly why. Build a business case that clearly highlights the frustrations and limitations users face on your current site and the improvements a new one can bring. Be specific about the goals a new website could achieve (like simplifying workflows, improving student engagement, or supporting donor outreach). Use qualitative research like surveys, interviews, focus groups, and more.
Invite key stakeholders into the process. An influential executive, such as a provost or a VP, can help communicate the importance of the project. Additionally, you can invite respected deans, professors, and key administrative assistants as project ambassadors. They can participate in focus groups, contribute to refining the project’s goals, and help you communicate the idea within the institution.

Create specific user personas

To craft a website that truly resonates with your audience and is optimized to meet their needs, you might want to consider creating user personas. This technique is particularly helpful when approaching website usability testing.

A user persona is essentially a fictional profile based on real data and user insights. You can group your users into meaningful personas based on who they are, what they need, where they live, how old they are, and what they’re trying to achieve on your site. For example, a university website might identify prospective students aged 16-20 as one persona, focusing on content that highlights campus life, career paths, and urban amenities.

Once you’ve built these personas, you can stress-test them across different scenarios. Think about their comfort with technology, their emotional state while browsing, their place in the conversion cycle, and even how they access your site. A prospective student may be tech-savvy and impatient for quick answers, while a working adult student might need user-friendly scheduling tools to manage their time effectively.

You can give your user personas relatable names like the following:

“Snapchat Sally” — a social-media-savvy student
“Working Wanda” — a busy professional
“Second-Language Sam” — a student whose native language is not English
“Continuing Ed(ward)” — a student who continues education
“Parent Pat” — a student whose parents may be the driving force for decisions

Follow the link to our article for more detailed descriptions of these 5 student personas for your higher education website, as well as the practical ins and outs of using the user persona approach. Let those fictional characters give you truly real and tangible benefits!

Reach your site’s full potential with Drupal

Higher ed websites are usually vast and complex, hosting numerous departments and serving the needs of various audiences from prospective students to alumni and donors. These sites require a platform robust enough to manage extensive demands while delivering an engaging user experience.

The answer is Drupal — the perfect open-source CMS for higher education institutions. We may be biased considering our 20+ years of experience in Drupal website development for higher education, but it’s also the objective choice for many of those working in higher ed, in fact 80% of the top 100 universities utilize Drupal on at least one of their websites.

Websites for universities and colleges have specific and complex requirements that mostly revolve around:

managing a vast amount of diverse content
integrating third-party software like student information systems (SIS), learning management systems (LMS), and more
delivering seamless user experiences with clear journeys for all audiences to make conversions

Drupal meets all these needs and many more. It offers robust content workflows with collaboration features, empowering individual departments while maintaining a cohesive brand presence. Drupal also allows seamless integration with third-party systems, creating a unified digital ecosystem. Take the example of UC Santa Cruz, which migrated to Drupal to achieve better integration with its CRM, boosting recruitment efforts and enhancing the overall user experience.

Drupal offers a wealth of design options and personalization features to optimize user experience. Supported by a global developer community, Drupal evolves with ongoing updates, providing universities with the latest tools to maintain, enhance, and expand their digital presence. Get more insights and inspiring examples about boosting your higher ed website’s potential with Drupal.

And more

Our blog is a treasure trove for those who’d like to see more insights for optimizing their higher education website. For example:

learn how to create vibrant and fresh student-centered content
check out 3 important steps for optimizing higher ed search experience
find tips to maximize student admissions
see how to optimize your website to move prospective students through the decision funnel
don’t miss 3 additional actions for improving your higher ed website accessibility
take a dive into creating inclusive higher ed content
drive inspiration from stunning higher ed website design examples

Final thoughts

In this collection of our latest content, we’ve explored how a strong digital foundation can optimize the reach of your higher education institution. Let your higher ed website become a robust recruitment tool, an engaging digital home for alumni, and a central hub for students, faculty, and staff. Reach out to discover how our experienced Drupal team can bring it to life.