Abby Dean, Senior Director, University Marketing and Creative Services
Our website is our most valuable resource for recruitment – the central piece of all our communications and outreach. Our publications direct students to our website for more information, our emails link to it for registrations, inquiries and applications and our advertisements all direct to landing pages on our sites to entice behaviors we encourage. The content (written and visual), layout and navigation are paramount to the success of our recruitment efforts.
Ruffalo Noel Levitz reports that 31% of students find information on a website through a search engine. In order for our pages to be effective, the content must be written in a way that helps search engines identify that page as a match for the search. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The easier students can find our sites, the better we’re able to market to them.
In addition to SEO, using the university brand narrative and tone to maintain consistency and providing that information in a concise manner is key. Today’s students are very savvy. Any discrepancy in narrative and tone within communications breeds distrust. This is the reason the university has brand standards…to make sure that we’re consistently representing ourselves to build trust in the students we’re trying to recruit.
Finally, the use of compelling images and videos, employing intuitive navigation and a responsive design will all help make our sites as impactful as possible. Luckily for the university, we have in-house experts in all these areas. Working with Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications is the easiest way to make sure your website is working as hard as it can for you, and the university.
