You’ve heard it before: Your website is the most important marketing tool in your toolkit. And you’ve heard that 2020 has been “unprecedented,” “unlike any other year,” and so forth. What do those two facts have in common? The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the way people interact with websites. It’s altering the way people consume information and find your website. And it’s underscoring the importance of websites.
Your .edu is an essential destination for all the audiences you care about. But it’s especially important to prospective students and their parents, and it will continue to play a key role in virtually every aspect of the decisions they make regarding college search and choice. It’s more important than ever that your website provides thorough, well-rounded insights into your institution. It’s past time to shape it up to meet the changed landscape.
Why now, “more than ever”?
In the “before” times, a website was one of multiple touchpoints for your institution. What made it different even then was that it was available 24/7 and was where prospects were likely to begin learning about your institution. Today, though, their relationship begins on your site — it’s the only touchpoint they have — and it is nurtured through the information you provide and the online ecosystem of social media you’ve created, along with other tools and systems you’re using to provide services to your stakeholders and insights to your staff.
Like any good relationship, the relationship students and parents establish with your institution through your website must evolve. And for that to happen, you need to be thinking constantly about the site, adding and removing content, and making other appropriate changes. mStoner’s ever-quotable creative director, Ben Bilow, likens higher ed websites to living organisms, and their managers “gardeners of a vast, evolving ecosystem during a hot, persistent summer.”
