How to Make Your Higher Ed Website a Hub for Vibrant, Student-Focused Content

Jul 13 2021

Authored by Richard Nosek and Vanessa Turke.

Students make decisions about where to attend college or university primarily based on emotion. They research factors like cost, financial aid, size, location, and available majors. But — at the end of the day — it comes down to these questions. Do I belong here? Will I feel at home? What are the people like? Is this school a good fit for me?

Your website should answer these questions with compelling, engaging, fresh content. Yet too often, higher education websites are chock full of well-written, accurate, exhaustive information that evokes zero emotion.

Does that sound like an exaggeration? After all, your homepage probably does feel modern and inviting. These days, most colleges and universities understand the value of that big-bang first impression. But does that initial impression last when a prospective student starts to navigate deeper into your site? If a student lands on a department page from a Google search one can never visit your homepage at all. In this case will they have a sense of who you are?

If boring walls of text are lurking just a few clicks away from your homepage on each individual school and department page, it’s time to develop a better content strategy for your entire website — one that makes use of all the content sources and modalities available to you.

Here’s how to turn your website into a vibrant content hub that effectively tells your story. And it can be the one that helps students imagine themselves as part of your community.

Negat enim summo bono afferre incrementum diem. Certe non potest. Quae sequuntur igitur? Gerendus est mos, modo recte sentiat. Illud non continuo, ut aeque incontentae. Et quidem, inquit, vehementer errat; Haec para/doca illi, nos admirabilia dicamus.