253 Total Responses First and foremost I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. The feedback from this has been amazing and I know everyone has been anticipating the results. These results will help others shape and make informed decisions about their web environment. I have a feeling most of you are already scrolling through it right now, I don’t blame you. For each question I included a mix graphs, tables and some commentary about the results or question. ... Read Full Story

In a previous post, I talked about how to start getting your internal knowledge into a knowledge base.  But just because you’ve built a knowledge base, doesn’t mean people will begin using it.  You need to ensure that content is maintained and that people know how to use it to find the information they need. Here’s a strategy I’ve used when implementing a new knowledge base in a scenario where users rely on IT support people and helpdesk systems: When a new helpdesk ... Read Full Story

This is from notes I took earlier, but didn’t have time to post. This session was beyond standing room only – people were standing out in the hall! Rachel has already blogged about this, but I thought it was worth putting out there again. You can also download the full white paper. Great data! 1000 college bound high school seniors, randomly selected 95% confidence interval +/- 3% margin of error 1) How they find your site What you go to look for a college website, what page are y... Read Full Story

Speakers: Teri Lucie Thompson, Purdue University and Elizabeth Scarborough, SimpsonScarborough If you are reinventing, you need a poster child (one that is not controversial and one that is very easy to see transformation in). At Purdue, it was a broken pay telephone that was the first thing people saw at the visitors center – the first thing they saw on campus was broken technology. That lead to a $100,000 investment to renovate the visitors center. The Journey Central vs. decentraliz... Read Full Story

Speaker: Dr. John F Carney III, Chancellor, Missouri University of Science and Technology Opening Video: Rebranding Tradition: Begin with the end in mind Know who you are Know whom you serve Create a conversation to built ownership. The Results: Record enrollment: up 4%, the largest in 20 years Out of state applications up 27% with out of state enrollment up 9% Pre college summer program participation up 14% with a 24% matriculation rate Corporate recruiter interest up 6% Record fundrais... Read Full Story

Speaker: Fritz McDonald, VP of Creative Strategy, Stamats, Inc. (Sorry, I came in late to the session) Listen to your audience – how many people asked their audience if they WANTED a Facebook page? A network may be better to a Facebook page – your audience might view it as different. Real time response is always important – people expect it. People will take you more seriously if you respond to them in real time than if you have the best Facebook page ever. Let them make co... Read Full Story

Speaker: Bill Toliver, Director, The Matale Line One of your great goals as a professional should be to be fired – that’s when you know you’re pushing the envelope. A brief state of the union: Economy is somewhere between bad and worse ever – we’re freeing up budgets, but we’re all still scared Politics: somewhere between “yes we can” and “over my dead body” Strategic gifts: a new definition of “ouch” Crop of new studen... Read Full Story

I’m going to spend the next few days at the American Marketing Associations Symposium on the Marketing of Higher Education, live blogging when I can, but first I wanted to post an update from SIM Tech. Last week, Kyle, Rachel and I had the pleasure of speaking at Stamat’s annual SIM Tech conference. Stamats always does a great job with that conference, bringing in great speakers and giving out a lot of great information (and no, it’s not a constant sales pitch!). This year ... Read Full Story

If you remember the slides from my presentation at WhippleHill’s User Conference you might notice that for the most part these are the same slides.  I did add a whole new section on conversion pages.  Yes, a conversion page is a landing page but I’m just always careful about calling it a landing page as technically any page that is the first a visitor sees on your site is a landing page and we know with search engines every page on your site becomes a landing page. So anyway no r... Read Full Story

If you work in higher ed, you have people who have become fixtures.  They roll up all of the tiny details, the business processes and procedures, into their heads like a Katamari. Once it’s all there, that person is your knowledge base, your Karamari forever (excuse the bad joke, folks).  He or she attends all the key meetings.  Every person or process involves at least one part where this person is consulted for how “we” do things.  And new hires must spend a significant p... Read Full Story