10 for 10: Looking Ahead to Next Year’s Web Design Trends

I recently did a blog that recapped the Web trends we saw in 2009 and a story in Brand Bounce eNewsletter (click here to receive Brand Bounce, at bottom of page) on what to expect in the coming year.  This blog provides further detail on those trends.

While 2010, won’t be a big departure from the trends that gained traction in ’09, we’ll see some of these trends expanded on and become much more ubiquitous on sites.  This doesn’t mean that you have to cram your sites with all of these trends.  Rather pick and choose the ones that best suit your site and your brand.  But go ahead…experiment a bit.  That’s the beauty of the Web you can introduce and refine.

Want to create memorability?  Try these ideas (click on the images to go to the website):

1. Go Big: Oversized logos and headers have replaced splash pages as a statement.  Some of these designs can, in fact, take up the entire initial screen from which site visitors scroll down.  The rationale behind this?  Studies are finding that users tend to have an initial aversion to clicking, because of too many experiences with bad navigation.  The header and scroll, gives people time to settle into your site.  Some examples:

2. Sketch it out: While drawing and illustration has been a staple of print design, it’s new – and eye catching – on the web.  Get those illustrators on your staffs to dust off their pens/pencils and apply their talents to your web pages.  Why it’s worth considering?  It adds dimension to your site, separates the pros from the amatures and catches attention.  Good examples include:

3. Break the type mold: Bold expressions using typography, like the use of slab typefaces, go hand in hand with the trend to bigger design. Designers continue to push the frontiers on font use as design on the Web.  And our browsing experience is the richer for it.  The true trend setters have abandoned their fears of usability issues and taken to exploring, twisting, and molding fonts to fit their purposes. With the correct placement, a website that utilizes typography as its main design element will be more interesting to a reader than overloading the same site with tons of photos.

Scale doesn’t only apply to type and headers.  It can be applied in terms of your overall site design as well.

4. Get down to the bare essentials and make it personal: one page layouts force you to focus on the essential elements of your story.  One pagers are great ways to introduce your organization and tell your story in other areas of the web where your audiences find you – blogs, social media pages, directories.  One pagers should be more personal – providing users with insights into who you are and what makes your organization tick.

5. Show the big picture: Like big logos and headers, a huge and stunning image does the same thing.  It will create an impression site visitors are likely to remember.  It’s a great opportunity to tell your brand story with those thousand words imbedded in the image rather than typed out on the page!

6. Be a minimalist: Think minimalism in terms of design, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you sacrifice richness.  Instead it means you get directly to the point.

Finally, capitalize on what we know works:

7. Don’t just show, let your visitor do: Interactivity keeps reaching new highs in terms of functionality and usablitity.  The days of the all-Flash, bandwidth hog websites should be disappearing.  And while these over-the-top uses of flash created kind of a mini-backlash against Flash, that should be over too.  Today’s Flash integrates itself into sites much more seamlessly.  Add to that, new tools like jQuery that can mimic a lot of the motion that Flash brings, and interactive design is primed to move to a whole new level.

8. Go Modal: Modal boxes are a great way to bring depth and dimension to your website without over-cluttering the design and muddying the visitor experience/  They can allow you to get more personal with your site visitors by giving the a deeper glimpse into your brand experience.  They’re also a great way to say hello.  Modals take pop ups to the next level – unlike their intrusive predecessors, modal boxes are better looking, operate more smoothly, and user controlled. Here’s WebGuru’s list of the 10 best modal boxes and their accompanying codes…why start from scratch, when someone’s already done it for you!

9. Repurpose the best of what’s old and make it something new: Retro design is a perennial favorite of designers.  Doing retro right takes some skill.  In the hands of a great designer, however, infusing some retro elements into your site could hit the right note for your brand.  The trick is to pay appropriate homage to the vintage art, tap into some of the playfulness inherent in retro design and avoid its sentimentality.

10.  The graphic, well organized format of the print magazine finds a new home online: In the online magazine layout, information is carefully organized on a single home page, giving the visitor an opportunity to explore as interested. The familiar layout will appeal to appeal to anyone who’s ever read a magazine or newspaper.  This isn’t about taking a print publication and putting it online, it’s taking the best of the print magazine format and migrating it to a digital environment.  Blogs, in particular, will adopt this format.  And with the growing popularity of e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, there will be increasing opportunities to create digital formats of institutional publications like alumni and research magazines, even recruitment publications.

Should Universities Create Mobile Applications Solely for Prospects?

Disclaimer: I do realize everyone doesn’t use an iPhone, Android-enabled phone, or a BlackBerry, but I also realize the percentage of college-bound students who do is rising. Moving forward, it will become more and more important to offer something in this space.

I’ve been thinking and researching hard but as far as I can see into the mobile higher education horizon I can’t envision a way to design a Web application solely for prospective students and have it provide an adequate ROI… or in other words, be worth your institution’s time investment. If you’ve seen something that’s been successful in the marketplace that’s specifically catered towards prospects, please let me know in the comments.

The major thought I do have on this is using an application in conjunction with an on-campus tour, which I touched on in a blog post in July. Research suggests designing with current students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community in mind would be the best way to go. Your app can (and should) still be marketed to prospective students in an indirect way, but in more of an “experience what happens here” type of way. I’d say this could be done through an acknowledgement of it and its core features in the prospective student section of your website, and this information could also be relayed to high school guidance counselors.

Downloading and experiencing the application is obviously a great way for students to truly get a feel of the university since they’ll be using the exact same software/platform if they enroll. If you give them enough reason to, they’ll download your app free (make sure it’s free!) to see what the fuss is about and put themselves in the shoes of a current student. According to the 2009 Voice of the Student Report, it’s something they’re looking for.

If you’re reading this you might be aware of many of the applications already out there. I’ve downloaded and tried over 20 university applications (see screenshot for a sampling). In my humble opinion, the most useful and well executed applications use a platform developed by Blackboard (formerly TerriblyClever). iStanford was the first app ever developed and remains excellent, arguably cream of the crop. DukeMobile is another popular application from a large university, noted more recently for its inclusion of their libraries’ digital collections within the app, which is a super awesome and useful feature for students. Duke has also done an excellent job creating an overview page of what’s available for interested mobile users and another page under the information technology portion of their site detailing features and updates.

Other institutions that use the Blackboard platform that I’m aware of are University of Washington, Texas A&M University, Kean University, TCU, University of San Diego, Seton Hall Univesrity, and Stetson University. The biggest drawback to creating an iPhone app is plain and simple: cost.

The new kid on the block is a platform by Mobile Educator. They appear to only have contracted with one University at this time, and it’s actually a school: Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. Not fully knowing The University of Rochester’s brand architecture, I can’t say for sure whether this is the correct way to be branding the school, but some might find it unusual that the overall university does not have an application while the school does (for the record, I don’t believe it’s an issue).

I won’t get into the specifics of the software itself too deeply, as there is already a fantastic review online courtesy of Michael Fienen of Pittsburg State University. And I have to quote an amazing factoid from his write-up, which is essentially from the Mobile Educator site directly: 28% of iPhone users and 69% of iPod Touch users are between the ages of 13 and 24.  That amounts to approximately 20 million users.

To end this post back at the beginning, should your University offer a mobile application to attract prospective students? Not necessarily. Should you create one to keep your current students, faculty, staff, administrators, and even alumni happy and engaged? Definitely. There’s little evidence that developing an app solely for prospects yields better results than developing a really useful app for other audiences. However, do make sure that prospective students are aware of your app’s existence and allow them to try it out. For a short amount of time they’ll receive the same experience as your current students who use the application.

A direct approach you can and should take for prospects is to create a mobile-optimized website for incoming students. Whether that means browsing from certain phones automatically redirects to the mobile version of the site or users must visit a specific URL on their own, it’s an advantage for prospects. I can see leading them to a site containing all your key messages via mobile advertising. Tactics such as mobile campaigns involving texting, etc. are still very viable, but creating an application solely for your prospective audience is in most cases, not.

Marketing Made Easy

I am conducting a seminar next week for a dozen or so foreign university presidents.  This through the Academy for Educational Development (AED), working with USAID and a collection of U.S. host universities.

Now I’ve given plenty of CEO seminars over the years, but these presidents are from the Middle East, where there hasn’t been a strong legacy for strategic communications.  Which got me thinking about how to address the fundamentals of brand marketing.

I’ve heard (you probably have, too) the old saw that marketing boils down to two things:  a) what you want to say, and; b) who you want to say it to.  There’s a kernel of truth there, but it’s so simplistic as to be unhelpful, missing a crucial issue:  To achieve what?

So when these foreign presidents visit the U.S. to learn the secrets of American brand marketing, it will be more productive to discuss the “Three A’s:” Awareness, Attitude, Action.

I wish more U.S. college presidents understood these.  Maybe your president is one who needs a refresher.

Awareness
This is the baseline of marketing communications.  If audiences don’t know about you, they can’t/won’t engage.  Building awareness isn’t complex, just demanding.  It requires an array of tactics and platforms designed to inform audiences about who you are, what you offer.

But note that awareness implies an outcome: Not that you merely create communications devices, but that they are received and remembered by audiences.  There is critical nuance in the level of awareness, too.

What we should be aiming for is top-of-mind awareness.  That’s when audiences – on their own – think about you when higher ed topics arise or when a life trigger spurs them to choose or engage with a college or university.  Top-of-mind is elusive and requires time and investment – both of which can be minimized if you create a consistent, memorable brand identity.

Awareness is the essential foundation, but it must lead to attitude.

Attitude
Attitude sets the stage for action.  Creating a (positive) attitude means evoking an emotional response from your audiences, and that requires a clear brand personality.

While it’s easy to focus on communicating facts, figures, and competitive advantages, it is your brand personality that ultimately differentiates you from competitors.  Personality grabs attention. Personality creates impact and memorability.  Personality engenders attitude.

Creating a high-impact, memorable brand personality requires consistency in design, color palette, photography, tone, and style.  But when your audiences have a positive attitude and an emotional affinity to your organization, the sales teams – recruiters, fundraisers, outreach specialists – will be orders of magnitude more effective in “closing the deal.”

Action
This is where the rubber meets the road for marketing.  Marketing is worth nothing unless it creates action, so the performance of the marketing team must be judged on bottom-line measurements.  Increase fundraising?  By how much?  Increase enrollment?  By how many?

Making bottom-line results a responsibility of the marketing unit changes everything:  It necessitates close integration of the marketing team with the “sales teams.”  It requires fundraisers, alumni affairs, and recruiters to act collaboratively, to dissolve traditional silos.  It also requires a data-driven approach to marketing communications so that quantifiable measures drive the strategies and tactics.

If a college or university president has a good grasp of the Three A’s of Marketing, they are well on their way to understanding and supporting an effective brand marketing program.

When It Rains, It Pours…A PR Nightmare at UNM

Ever have “one of those days?” Well, UNM Athletics is having “one of those semesters.”

UNM Athletics has been hammered by issue after issue making the national and international news – none of them in a good way. Bear with me as I recap the incidents briefly.

The first dealt with Lobo head football coach, Mike Locksley, who was hired in December 2008 and since then has created controversy left and right.  According to a California news website a former administrative assistant “accused Locksley of sexual harassment, age discrimination and retaliation. The plaintiff’s lawyer said Locksley told the woman she was too old to be attractive to recruits.” According to the NCAA Football Fanhouse (click here), the issue was resolved out of court and “All EEOC claims have been withdrawn.”

Then there was a terribly misguided September ad campaign tying Lobo Athletics to a local casino promotion: Lobo Loco ads blog (click here).

Next came an incident that recently played itself out over national ESPN interviews, where Locksley was accused of hitting an assistant coach. See this Associated Press article.   This was followed up by the thorough bungling of the investigation of the fight incident by the UNM Athletics department, as painfully described in this ill-advised and poorly executed press conference by UNM President David Schmidly and VP of Athletics Paul Krebs

As of Tuesday night, I understand the issue is now under further investigation by the UNM staff committee. All of this on top of UNM’s on-field troubles of a 0-9 losing football season.

And now comes the BYU vs UNM soccer incident that has again made the international news. I will let the video clip below from ESPN’s Sports Center speak for itself.

The player has been suspended indefinitely, issued a written apology, and has gone into hiding due to wide release of and strong negative reaction to the incident.  There have been many articles regarding the situation. Here are a couple of them:

• A letter to the editor of the DailyLobo (UNM student newspaper) by a BYU student
• UK’s Sky News call player “dirtiest” soccer player ever
• Brisbane Times calls incident an internet hit

UNM had no way of preventing or controlling this series of events, of course. Every school has or will have unforeseeable issues that plague them like this, although this non-stop series of one after the other has got to set some sort of record.

Yet several of UNM’s recent wounds were self-infllicted.  The Lobo Loco ad campaign, for example, was misguided from the start, and should never have seen the light of day.  And the press conference in which the UNM President and VP of Athletics tediously slogged through a laundry list of what UNM did wrong in the Locksley assault case was badly mishandled.

In fact, there has been scant evidence of any judicious, well-planned issues management from the institution.  Here’s what we all might take away from this unfortunate series of events:

1. Have an “issues management plan” (not just a “crisis plan”) in place that defines policies, procedures, and responsibilities.  Responses should be directed by a small team of the most experienced and trusted communicators on campus, rather than departmental (in this case, Athletics) staff.  Make sure administrators approve the plan in advance.
2. One clear, credible spokesperson should consistently deal with the media throughout.
3. Create talking points and guidelines for those who need to know regarding policy issues and the institutional responses and solutions.
4. Resolve the issue quickly, completely, and decisively the first time, rather than trying to “contain” or “compartmentalize responses. Letting issues trickle on is the worst possible approach.
5. Never allow the CEO to “own” all the problems and errors, only the solutions.
6. Act fast, act honestly, act comprehensively.

Hopefully this will mark the end of issues for UNM Athletics and they’ll be able to move forward with academics and athletics more productively.  We hope so!

The Rise of DESIGN on the Web

I’ve been working on a number of different web projects lately, and like many other creative directors, have run up against the huge obstacle in creative expression on the Web…primarily the limitation of the medium to allow the full richness of expression one can achieve in print, for example.  Ironic, since most of what you see in print today was created using digital tools!

It’s fair to say that, for the most part, function has outpaced form on the Web.  Most sites, even today, are ruled by the constraints placed on them by programmers tasked with taking something graphical in nature and converting it into strings of words that approximate what the designer has imagined.  As a result, the majority of what we see on the Web has a feeling of sameness.  That said, there are glimmers of a new age of design on the Web, trends that will allow you to break your sites out of their boxes…literally.

Following is a list of the 10 hottest trends playing out in 2009, courtesy of Smashing Magazine [www.smashingmagazine.com/ The magazine compiled over 25 trends worth checking out.

1. Letterpress

One of the most unexpected trends in Web design observed over the last months was the emergence of letterpress (actually pressed letters). Probably the most important reason for this trend is the simple fact that this technique has been rarely used until now. Letterpress is used in various styles, on various websites, and for various topics; in particular, it is often used in product designs and on websites for online services.

2. Rich User Interfaces

Happily, user interfaces in modern websites and Web applications are becoming more beautiful and more usable. Over the last year, the user experience for these applications has dramatically improved, resulting in rich and responsive user interfaces that have tremendous similarities with classic desktop applications. AJAX and Flash are widely used to offer users the dynamic interaction that they have come to expect from advanced, sophisticated, professional solutions.

In particular, we’ve seen much more white space over the last year, much more padding and much more space for various design elements. We also observed that many modern user interfaces display intuitive visual clues to communicate the status of a user’s interaction with the system. For instance, upon being clicked, event buttons often change their appearance from a “normal” to a “pressed” look (as on Newspond.com and Quicksnapper.com), confirming and providing immediate feedback on the user’s interaction with the system. Aside from this, more and more services are now able to be personalized by the user: for us, it’s a clear sign that adaptive user interfaces are coming in 2009.

Both examples are evidence that designers of Web applications are paying significantly more attention to the way in which functionality is presented and are trying to improve the user experience with more interactive and responsive solutions.

3. PNG transparency

PNG transparency, although unsupported by Internet Explorer 6, seems to have gained popularity on the scene over the last year. Apparently, designers are trying to better integrate background images into the actual content and are aiming for a style that is often seen in printed media, magazines for instance. In most cases, semi-transparent backgrounds stand out in the overall background of a page and are intended to highlight an important design element, such as a headline or announcement. Sometimes PNG transparency is used for the background of modal boxes as well.

Last year, we described a variety of ways in which can get creative with transparency in Web design, and many designers seemed to experiment with these techniques in their work. Interestingly enough, transparency is often used either in the header or footer of designs, but some designs go beyond that.

4. HUGE Typography

We presented some outstanding examples of BIG typography in previous posts. In 2009, big typography remains popular. In particular, design agencies, portfolios, product websites and online services will use big typography to communicate the most important messages of their websites.

The font size of these design elements often goes beyond 36 pixels, and in many cases quite expansive typefaces are used to reach an audience. Overall, designers are paying closer attention to typographic details such as leading, line height and choice of font. The consequence: websites are more beautiful and more consistent and look solid and trustworthy.

5. Font Replacement

As designers pay more attention to typography, they also pay more attention to the fonts that are used for the copy in the body of websites. Although classics such as Helvetica, Arial, Georgia and Verdana undoubtedly dominate, we observed a slight trend towards font replacement.

What is interesting is that these fonts are often seamlessly integrated in the design of websites; they are almost never used for their own sake or simply to “upgrade” the typography of a website. Designers are trying to blend beautiful typography and arresting visual design to improve the appearance of websites and improve the user experience.

6. Modal Boxes (Lightboxes)

Modal boxes (dialog windows) are, essentially, the second generation of pop-ups. They serve as a user-friendly alternative to classic JavaScript windows and support users by focusing their attention on the most important area of the website. Modal windows are always triggered by a user action (e.g. signing up or logging in) and appear on top of the main content, like a window in a regular desktop application. Modal windows are often presented in a very subtle way: they are often semi-transparent and have a “Close” button.

7. Media Blocks

With more broadband Internet access, users can now afford to browse more than they did a couple of years ago, and designers can use this opportunity to present content in a more attractive and memorable way. Hence, it’s no wonder that many product websites use media blocks (for videos and screencasts) for this very purpose. The main advantage of such elements is that they can communicate content quickly and effectively and make it easier for users to consume information.

Users just lean back and enjoy the show; they get everything explained to them step by step, without having to click, search for descriptions or learn the navigation. The movies are usually pretty short and get directly to the point; they are mostly formal but can be entertaining, too.

But please make sure that videos are an alternative presentation of, and not the main or only, content on your website. Not every user has broadband access to the Web, not every user is willing to watch a video (e.g. because he or she may have a radio or music playing in the background), and not every user has Flash and JavaScript installed on his or her machine.

8. The Magazine Look

An interesting development in the design of blogs is the adaptation of various techniques usually found in traditional (print) media. The arrangement of posts on the page, the use of typography, illustrations and even text alignment often resemble traditional techniques from print. Grid-based designs are gaining popularity as well but are used mostly in portfolios, product pages and big blogs; they almost never appear on corporate websites or in online shops.

9. Carousels (Slideshows)

Carousels are essentially slide-show navigations. The content rotates vertically or horizontally (hence the name “carousel”). To rotate the navigation, users need to click on one of two toggle elements (usually a left/right or up/down arrow). Depending on the toggle element selected, the content is rotated in the desired direction.

Instead of clicking through various sections of the website for their favorite stories, users can quickly skim through the available stories without vertical scrolling or unnecessary mouse movements. The result: users save time, and the carousel focuses their attention sharply on the content, instead of on interacting with the browser. Such slide-show navigation is often used on entertainment websites and big blogs, but designers also make use of it in their portfolios to showcase their work in a more interactive way.

10. Introduction Blocks

The upper-left area of a website is the most important block on the page, because it grabs the most attention from visitors. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to place the most important message of the website right there and thus make sure that readers get the message as quickly as possible.

In fact, this is exactly what many designers are doing. Whether for a Web application, corporate design, online service or portfolio, designers are pushing their slogans and brief introductions to the top of the page and are using strong, vivid typography to make a good first impression. Some introductions are short, others are quite lengthy; in either case, they usually take a lot of space; the full width of the layout and between 250 and 400 pixels in height are common dimensions for these introduction blocks. Notice, though, that introduction blocks almost never appear in blogs and rarely in online shops.

For all the trends visit smashingmagazine [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/14/web-design-trends-for-2009/]

Don’t Wait: Brainstorm Twitter Lists and Use Them Now

If you follow what’s new with Twitter, you’re certainly aware of their latest and most significant announcement in some time: lists. It’s safe to say that the new feature has already been a huge hit and is one of the  most requested features (along with integrated retweeting). Via 3^rd party tools such as TweetDeck and Seesmic, you’ve been able to create groups and break out those you follow.  This was a great way to solve the common issue of too much noise in your Twitter stream, especially when following a large number of people. I also used this for categorizing.

Thankfully for us tweeters, this functionality is now integrated into twitter.com and in my opinion, Twitter hit the ball out of the park, as the implementation is extremely well done.

When you create a list, you’re able to add people you’re following and edit out those you’re not. Following/follower status is irrelevant. Anytime you are on anyone’s profile page, you have the ability to add them to a list. The result is your created list(s) contain the Twitter streams of those who have been added to the list.  Simple enough, right?

Examples of lists in action are the six lists (as of this writing) Techcrunch has created: @TechCrunch/microsoft. It looks like they’ve collected all of Microsoft’s official Twitter entities, along with a few other Microsoft-related accounts. The cool thing is that this list will be accessible from my profile page, hence anyone who visits my page can see that I follow it. I love that the ability to follow lists exists without having to individually follow each member of a list (Hope I didn’t lose you there). The Twitter users in the Microsoft list will not show up in my timeline.

Since lists act like their own person and are accessible to anyone, I imagine there will soon be a directory ranking of the most popular Twitter lists  (Kevin Rose of WeFollow just announced WeFollow’s lists of top influential users. No rankings of lists just yet). This assumes the list is not private as Twitter offers the option of making lists private, too.

The most creative example I’ve seen so far (I have to admit I’m a tad biased here, is what the NHL has done. They’re using lists as a method to categorize NHL fans by favorite team. They’re methodology is simple: ask users to send an @message to them including their favorite team and the hashtag #myfavoriteNHLteam. Presto, like-minded fans join their team’s “official Twitter fan club”.

Here at EMG, we’ve brainstormed how lists can be used in higher education. There’s real opportunity to get in on this Twitter feature. Let’s say we use an NHL-like approach. Your institution can assemble current and prospective students by academic interest/major. By tweeting, “Please tweet @XYZuniversity your desired/current major and include the hashtag #mymajor,” you create a public forum for students interested in their major.

Another possibility is to create lists for alumni by graduating class. Or you might organize your faculties by college, providing students the ability to gain insights from every professor in their area of study. You could run contests and as prospective or current students achieve a challenge set out by your institution, they are added to a list. The idea of creating a “prestigious” list in which you had to earn your way on to sounds kind of nifty to me.

To wrap up this post, it’s important to follow pertinent lists yourself. Lists are still in their infancy, but well-populated lists are popping up fast, and of course doing more following will increase your chances of both your account or your lists being followed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gong to see if an EMG developer can help me create a site that categorizes and ranks Twitter lists!

All kidding aside, is there one out there currently? If so, please let me know in the comments!

What Students Are Telling You About Your Website Design

This is the second of my two-part post recounting what we learned in a recent series of online focus groups on website design and navigation.  The objective of the research was to gather input to guide development of a client’s new website.  Participants were high school students from the Midwest reacting and responding to  the client site and four carefully selected comparator websites.

We often use online focus groups to understand how and why target audiences respond to various types of communications.  Like all of our focus group work, these were designed for a specific school, but much of what we learned applies to any college website.

In the first post, What Students Really Want (click here), we laid out four factors that the focus group participants indicated were shaping their reactions when they visited a home page for the first time:

1. Design, content, color that define a strong personality
2. High-impact, descriptive photography
3. Friendly content that gets to the point fast
4. Clear navigation to find desired information easily

With regard to #4 above, careful interpretation of the user-group input identified two categories of information that prospects looked for in the initial website visit to see if they were interested enough to learn more:  Info they needed, and info they wanted.

Information that students need encompasses “Threshold Factors” that determine whether or not your institution can make it to the short list of schools that can be considered.  User group input showed that the pathways to Threshold information have to be clearly identified and easy to follow from your home page:

1. Program listings
2. Tuition and fees
3. Financial aid
4. Location

While you need to have clearly defined pathways to such information, it doesn’t necessarily mean that program listings, tuition and fees, location, and financial aid information should be at the very top of your navigational scheme.

Here’s why:  Focus group participants identified a second critical category of initial information – information they wanted to see.  These are Motivational Factors” that get prospects excited and energized enough to stay on your site and to find out more:

1. Campus setting and student life
2. Scholarships and Awards
3. Reputation
4. Brand personality and promise

Based on the user group input, shaping the user experience in a way that blends both Threshold and Motivational factors in a seamless and compelling way is the sine qua non for an elegant, effective student prospect website.

The more powerfully you communicate Motivational elements on the home page and throughout the pathways that prospects use to navigate to Threshold information – through engaging student-life images, concise brand messages, teasers about scholarship opportunities, designs that convey distinctive personality, and reputation-building proof points –  the more successful your site will be in generating inquiries and interest.

The trick is to communicate this sort of branded motivational information pervasively on your site in short, intriguing bits and pieces so that prospects are interested enough to get to the information they feel they need.  And once they arrive at Threshold information, you want that information to be absorbed within the context of your most motivational branding environment.

Out of State, Much in Mind

As the snow started falling like crazy in Colorado on Wednesday of this week,  I came across an article about the ski industry in Colorado. Due to lingering effects of the economic downturn, the ski industry has shifted its marketing strategy from marketing nationally and internationally to marketing in-state and  regionally. People aren’t driving as much, aren’t planning to go too far from home and aren’t spending that much money on a luxury like skiing.

Similar, but not exactly the same issues are being felt in higher education. Rising tuition, lower income, loss of jobs are being faced by many families. Which is one reason why I was surprised to see many universities last week mention they are going to start, are thinking about, or are being to pressured to increasing their out-of-state admissions.  UC Berkeley, University of Colorado, and the State University of New York are thinking of ways to increase out-of-state and international student numbers.

A couple notes before I begin. While I understand the  state funding issues and other budgetary issues revolving around this  issue, I want to mention some of the  marketing issues these schools may face in the near future as they move forward in their decision, at least in the short term. Also, this is not a bashing on the schools strategic decision, but more of a brain dump on potential issues.

• Costs families have to weigh. Students and their families, for the most part, have less money and may not be able to be accepted for a loan. This means that many students and families will have to debate whether they actually can afford some of the additional costs of an out-of-state education:
  • housing
  • transportation, both for local driving and back-to-home visits
  • transportation,  family visits on campus
  • long-distance communication
  • parking
  • out-of-state tuition
• Scattered audiences. While there are still many families doing “okay” and are able to afford or receive loans for many of the items listed above, being able to market to them en-masse may be difficult.  So money will be needed to boost marketing for a more scattered and widespread audience.
• Angering the local stakeholders. Community members, alumni, donors, and others may feel slided by the nearby university’s decision to target more out-of-staters. Some may disagree with the idea their higher education institution is not educating their local community. Some may even feel so strongly about it, they will no longer donate to or cut ties with the school.
• Reworking marketing materials. Many organizations have a single search mailer or viewbook they send to prospective students and they often tend to focus the style, language, and voice to match their major audience. Depending on where they shift there attention to grab out-of-state students, the schools above may need to rework their marketing materials to effectively reach their new audiences.
• Understanding and communicating with new audiences. To increase out-of-state enrollment, many will have to look to new markets and new audiences to reach their goals. This means that marketing research should be done to find  potential students and understand their motives.  Also an increase in out-of-state or international recruiters may be needed.
• Increased competition. Trying to sway a potential student away from a less-expensive,  in-state  university may be hard sell. Also, many institutions have been increasing their marketing capabilities to reach the increase of potential students (via – more higher ed students during poor economy). They are also trying to protect the markets they themselves consider strongholds.
• Educating new audiences. Many schools have market strongholds where the audiences know them fairly well. The audience knows about the school, have been on the campus a couple times, have considered going there, and have friends or family members that have gone there. When shifting markets, especially out-of-state markets, the marketing will have to start from scratch in many areas and educate the audience about the school.

Many universities have done almost the opposite based on their situations. They are bunkering down and, as mentioned, protecting or solidifying their current markets often with great benefits. They may even be venturing into a few newer markets to look for potential students.  Seems like a risky time to be frustrating current market strongholds and venturing heavily into new markets.

This is a risky move by UC Berkeley, University of Colorado and State University of New York with several potential issues, but only time will tell if  the benefits will outweigh the costs and if this is a strategy they plan on keeping in the long-term. All the luck to them and others facing this type of situation.

Fresh Perspective

For the past month, we’ve been slowly packing up our office in preparation for a move to our new space.  At first, the slowly emptying walls and filing cabinets made me uneasy. I felt as if the world around me was becoming ever more unsettled and uncertain.

As we went through the house-cleaning process, I sought to find reason to cling to every piece we’d ever done.  Surely one day we’d need to pull those pieces out and revisit them in all their glory, even though we’d found no such reason in the past three years!

But as I grew accustomed to this shifting landscape, a feeling of possibility, opportunity, and optimism replaced my unease.  I realized that removing the daily reminders of previous accomplishments had also had the effect of opening and redirecting my perspective, releasing my mind’s grip on all that past clutter and freeing it to look at what lay ahead.

As part of my job, I reach for new perspective on a regular basis.  I’m supposed to be stretching my vision forward to the next five years and on.  I didn’t realize how much being surrounded by what’s been done, in effect, kept me from seeing what could be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we all move…or empty out our offices!  In effect, that could be the easy way to do it.  But the idea of carving out an area in our offices, where we simulate a sort of sensory deprivation tank, where we can allow new thoughts and perspectives to occupy our minds is not be a bad idea.  Why?  Well that’s what’s at the crux of this blog.

The next five years for everyone, will be one giant shifting landscape.  I’m not necessarily talking about the economic climate in the country and on our campuses…although, these days, we are all being asked to do more with less.  I’m talking about the escalating change in communications.  And that doesn’t mean the move from print to online.  That train has already left the station.  If you don’t have a strategy for this, you are already well behind.  I’m not even talking about the social media space, which is already overwhelming many of us.

I’m talking about another shift in digital communications.  Just when many of us are sort of waking up to the idea that our website is an important communications tool, we have this to prepare for.  There is growing movement away from single-source environments on the Web.  Yes that means the care and feeding of your website, soon will not be enough, if we haven’t already started to reach that point.

Witness the explosion of applications for devices like the iPhone and popular programs like Facebook and Twitter.  What do these applications have in common?  They draw from various web tools to create a richer experience for the user.  For example, augmented reality technology allows your phone or your computer to not only see a map of the real world, but to also grab additional information such as the location of subway entrances, the price of houses in that area, or Twitter messages that have been posted nearby.  Wired had a nice piece on this recently.

There are apps that allow students on campus to locate one another, like the app developed by Stanford University. Or Princeton’s reunions mobile site that allows alumni to download an app to their phone with all the reunion information, saving the planet a few trees, the University a few dollars, and putting information at alumni fingertips without having to carry around bulky paper packets.

Needless to say, the potential with these types of apps is limitless.  More importantly this trend of aggregating various types of data into customized efficient packets for users is here to stay and only gaining in potential and popularity.  That means getting a grip on the data you already collect on campus and understanding what it is and how it might be used.  Identifying gaps in your data collection and new data you may want to collect.  Once you’ve done that, the next step is to imagine how to package this data in meaningful ways for your audiences.

Overwhelmed?  I think most of us are.  This whole notion of ones and zeros is a foreign language to most communicators and one I bet none of us thought we’d have to learn on at least a basic level.

I go back to my earlier statement about creating a space in your offices devoid of the past, where you can start to imagine tomorrow and the next day without the past surrounding you.  You’ll need all that white space to map out a plan for how all these new communications tactics will interconnect with each other and how you’ll manage them.  Then empty a drawer in the office where you can dump all the things you used to do.  One day, when you really move, you’ll be ready to let go of them for good!

Information Architecture: A Little Insight Into How I Start Building

Developing a website information architecture for an institution is usually a fun, yet humbling experience. And I swear I’m not just saying the fun part just for this blog! The process is also humbling in the sense that colleges and universities are complex entities, some more so than others. Some are small, some are large, but in their own ways, all are unique, influential, and mean something to a lot of people (students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, community members, etc.). Producing a website characteristically entails having to please many audiences, making difficult decisions, as well as reviewing and revising lots of material. Keeping the big picture in mind at all times is especially important.

When I begin the process, I make a point to start with a clear mind and a completely blank slate. I’ll go as far to say that having a cup of my favorite tea hits the spot. I don’t think about previous architectures I’ve helped make or work from any kind of template. Being able to start fresh is a wonderful feeling. This allows for a lot of freedom at the start of the process, but sooner than you might think, there does come a moment that you’ll be reminded of certain rules and/or limitations you need to abide by. Nobody wants to spend time working on something for no reason and working on something that is going in the wrong direction. An example of a limitation might be trying to get the best result with a difference between expectations. Some people have exaggerated expectations, while some have humble expectations and everything in between. Where is the happy middle ground or compromise? Another limitation is the issue of what pages/copy will be migrated over from the clients’ old site is vital to consider. And another limitation is that universities and colleges continuously seem to change and goals always seem to fluctuate and may go under considerable change as you develop the architecture. This mean you’ve got to mix and match what makes the most sense, while at all times striving to create the best possible and most relevant architecture.

But I’d quickly argue that these limitations are where creativity cultivates (say that 5 times fast). It’s not too difficult for me to remember several instances in which I was faced with having to venture away from initial plans, only to end up with a better end product. Stumbling across an alternative solution to your initial issue while all of a sudden simultaneously enhancing another area of the site? That’s a stellar feeling. Additionally, always keeping in mind basic principles and best practices is a given. Nobody likes to overlook the obvious.

To wrap this up, I’d like to revisit the beginning of the process, even before I sat down to drink my tea. Before the development stage, you obviously have to do your research, which includes a review of their current website (all factors, including navigation and brand presentation), several comparator websites, and analytics/web stats. The other part of the preparation is hearing the voices of campus stakeholders. We go through an intricate interview process with as many institution representatives as possible, everyone from the Presidents to students. This is where the nitty-gritty is learned. Little tidbits from different departments and different personalities can mean the world, both in terms of what needs to be done and inspiration for what could be done. Referring to our notes isn’t at all a trying process, it’s again… here comes that word… fun. Searching for the nuggets or website architecture-pertinent information from our conversations is personally rewarding. Without these intimate, in-person conversations, in my opinion, nothing mind-blowing would get made. Hitting on all the details you can while not compromising the overall integrity, usability, and impression of the site is clutch.