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.