Recently in Mobile Marketing Category

J.Boye Aarhus11 conference... notes from a great event

By Bob on November 14, 2011 4:35 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
J.Boye conferences... special places for new thinking and new solutions

Aarhus11 was my fourth J.Boye conference... my second in Denmark, with two in Philadelphia in between.

Why does a person who specializes in higher education marketing travel to this "web and Intranet" conference? 
  • To meet new people and hear new solutions about online challenges that we all face, from health care to higher education in areas that include digital marketing and web content management.
  • And at this event, to also meet Michael Fienen from Pittsburg State University who was presenting in the digital marketing and higher education tracks. Small world for sure.
Let me share some notes that made their way to my notebook at various times during the conference, in no special order of priority.

A new era for "simplicity" in web and Intranet?
  • Conference founder Janus Boye observed that "simplicity" was a word he was hearing in different sessions in different topics.
  • That's certainly true of the mobile world. The need for simplicity may indeed help shrink the bloated content that fills most websites today. The day the conference opened Jakob Nielsen published a new Alertbox column noting that working with a mobile site or app from a smartphone was like "reading through a peephole." 
  • Simplicity is imperative. "What did we do for simplicity today?" might well be the best way to start every web and Intranet discussion.
The Holy Grail is found: a person paid to remove website content
  • My biggest surprise was meeting someone who is paid to remove content from a website.
  • For over a year I've been asking in my presentations if anyone was paid to remove content from a website. Never yet had a taker until last Tuesday afternoon when Jesper Rossel raised his hand. Jesper recently persuaded his boss to change his position responsibility to removing 30 percent of the current content at Denmark's Knowledge Center for Agriculture. 
  • Be sure that I'll stay in touch with Jesper to see how that project moves forward. He should have a great presentation topic at a future J.Boye conference.
Social media: still a challenge
  • Organizations are still grappling with how to best "do" social media. Two not yet resolved areas: who in the organization is responsible and what to do when content appears that is not favorable? Answers are determined by factors as variable as the culture of an organization to the resources assigned to monitor and manage social media sites.
  • Loved Claire Flanagan's suggestion on how to bring a social media community to life and keep it active: create a controversy to get people's attention. A social media site that just reports news and PR spin won't do it. To read more about Claire's thoughts on the role of controversy in social media, check her Twitter posts.
  • Commitment to social media certainly is worth the effort to spread brand awareness and maintain customer loyalty. Those were points well worth the reinforcement given at Volker Grunauer's session on "Integrating Social Media into Your Digital Strategy." You can follow Volker on Twitter.
Top tasks, content strategy, and mobile website design 
  • My own tutorial went beyond higher education to include examples from local government and non-profit organizations to illustrate the key ingredient in developing content strategy for a mobile world: first identify the top tasks people want to do on your site, then build content and navigation to facilitate task completion. 
  • You can review and download that presentation from SlideShare now.

Next J.Boye Conference: Philadelphia, May 8-10 2012

Your next chance to experience a J.Boye conference is May 8-10 in Philadelphia. Program details are not available yet but you can check 10 track titles (including higher education), prices, and the conference hotel at the Philly conference website. 

Next "Writing Right for the Web" webinars in December
  • December 6, 8: Academic Impressions Webinars: "Writing Right for the Web: Social Media, Mobile, and Traditional Sites." Register now.
That's all for now.



Mobile websites, management, and Long Tail content

By Bob on August 19, 2011 9:01 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Reducing Content for Mobile: A challenge in decision-making

Reducing web content is a problem that needs to be on the table today, not tomorrow. 

At least 50 percent of the content on higher education websites (and indeed, most websites for any large organization) is of little importance to most of the people using that site. Since the mid-1990s, constant content creation has been the usual practice. Content deletion is rare.

At the Customer Carewords partnership, we refer to that excess content as the "Long Tail." A Gerry McGovern quote fits here: "Much of the long tail is a dead zone... full of dead and useless content."

What problems does it create?
  • Search results are often cluttered by dead and useless content.
  • Navigation is more difficult over a landscape littered with dead and useless content.
Nobody is going to create a truly friendly mobile web environment if they try to convert all their present website content to a "mobile friendly" status.

Mobile Demands Content Reduction: Start with the Home Page

In the new mobile world, less content littering your website means a more successful experience.

How many links do you have on your home page today? Now imagine that on a mobile home page you have to reduce that number to 6 to 10 links. How will you make a decision about what links deserve space on a mobile home page?

Build Content Strategy to Support a Few Top Tasks

Mobile will increase the importance of a "top tasks" approach to web design and content strategy. Your most important content is what's needed for visitors to complete their 3 to 5 top tasks. Navigation has to facilitate that task completion. Most websites today hide top tasks within a plethora of other less important options.

How to solve the mobile home page challenge? Limit the links to those that are top tasks for an important audience. 
  • For future students that will always include a link to a list of "Academic Programs."
  • For current students, it is links to a current calendar of events and to course registration software. 
  • For alumni, top tasks include requesting a transcript and reading class notes.
Right away we can see how home pages on traditional websites grew so many links. Even if limited to top tasks, adding links for each audience on one page guarantees many links. Add the others demanded by the internal political process and the "plethora" results.

University of British Columbia: Mobile App Opens with 2 Links

University of British Columbia begins to get things right by creating a mobile app with just 2 links on the first page: one for "Future Students" and another for the "UBC Community." Follow either of those to tasks links that are relevant to visitors in each group. To see the first two pages (and download the app if you have an iPhone) start at the UBC website.

UBC has as a survey underway now to help in the development of a mobile website. Let's see if similar simplicity continues after the results are in. The survey is open until August 26.

Top Tasks and Top Management: Chopping the Long Tail

Anyone can find out what content on a website creates the useless Long Tail. Analytics will tell the tale. Chopping off as much of that tail as possible to move to a mobile-friendly website will require the intervention of top management.

Sign of leadership: presidents and deans who volunteer to chop their "welcome" messages.

I'm optimistic top management will meet the challenge. A successful online experience is critical to student recruitment. Cleaning a website of "dead and useless" content and elevating top task design priority will mean a more successful experience on both traditional and mobile sites. 

Presentations on Mobile Marketing
That's all for now.




Mobile marketing... conference notes for higher education

By Bob on August 4, 2011 10:14 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Mobile Marketing in Higher Education: notes from summer conferences

Mobile marketing is still on my brain after my flight back from San Antonio and eduWeb11 yesterday. Before various random thoughts disappear, several things come to mind after mobile sessions at ACT Enrollment Planners Conference, Carol Aslanian's graduate recruitment conference, and eduWeb.

Mobile apps vs. mobile websites: no longer the first question asked
  • Mobile apps or mobiles websites: when I started doing mobile marketing workshops in 2010, this was the most common question. Today, it doesn't rank nearly as high. In my pre-conference workshop and in several mobile presentations at eduWeb this year, the emphasis is on the benefits of investing in a mobile website.
  • The rapid and continuing rise of Android phones has played a major role in this. Apple's advertising bombardment re "There's an app for that..." fueled the first wave of interest in "we've got to have one of those or the cool kids won't think we're cool" mania. Apps still have a role in online marketing, but the need to do at least two separate apps for Androids and iPhones brought some new reality into the cost of it all. 
QR codes: expanding use but beware of taking people to a regular website page
  • More people already are using these than expected, from advertisements to view books to signs on the front of campus buildings. As expected, use rate is low. Here in the U.S. most people don't yet have smartphones (about 35 percent according to Pew Internet) and most of those don't yet have QR code readers. So this is a great time to start exploring. Use of QR code readers will increase. But how fast it will increase isn't clear. Watch to see if QR readers are included on the iPhone5 this fall.
  • If you do add QR codes to advertising, for heaven's sake make sure that people who do use them don't end up on a regular website page where no engagement point is immediately visible. If you force people to "finger flick" to see what's on your landing page, your conversion will decrease. Guaranteed.
Content Migration, Top Tasks and Mobile: Potential Huge Management Issue
  • Be honest: at least 50 percent of the content on the website of any large organization including higher education isn't needed. Website content is often added, seldom removed. 
  • The holy grail for "mobile" is creation of a single website that people can use equally well from a smartphone or a laptop or desktop computer. Is that really possible? Maybe, but not if you try to stuff everything from your "regular" website into a mobile environment. "Mobile" is a great reason to kill content that's been around for far too long and adopt a new focus on the "top tasks" that people using sites actually want to do. 
Writing Right for the Web: Even More Important Now
  • Jakob Nielsen got it right in a recent Alertbox: for mobile, "short is too long."
  • Mobile will increase the value of web content editors. Not only do we have to focus on top tasks, we also have to reduce how much we say about them and do an even better job of using subheads and bullet points to break up dense blocks of text.http://www.customercarewords.com/what-it-is.html
Presentations on Mobile Marketing
That's all for now.

QR codes... a note for higher education mobile marketing success

By Bob on May 25, 2011 11:05 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
QR codes... best marketing success requires a mobile-friendly landing page

QR codes inspire a fair bit of discussion about whether or not they have any practical value for higher education marketing efforts. Here in the United States, their use so far seems limited but growing slowly. There isn't a need to rush into this. Smartphones sold in the U.S. don't come with bar code readers installed and most people have not yet taken time to download an app for that.

That said, limited use of bar codes in higher education marketing is starting. Last week flying back from a visit to Algoma University I opened the May issue of Sky Magazine, with special interest in the ads run by universities to entice business folk seeking professional advancement.

QR codes in 2 higher education magazine ads

Most of the 12 or so ads did not use QR codes. Two did: City University of New York School of Professional Studies and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. And so I used my free Bakodo app to read the QR codes to visit the landing pages for each ad.

One got it right. One got it wrong.

The CUNY QR code took me to a landing page designed especially for people visiting from a mobile device. A few key links, including the names of 4 featured academic programs, were immediately visible and easy to follow. No need for any finger flicking.

The Embry-Riddle QR code lead to a regular website landing page, designed to repeat and reinforce the main design theme and message of the original ad. That's admirable when taking people to a regular website page. It isn't so admirable when a visitor has to squint to see the primary heading above text that's impossible to read. The next step: finger flicking to enlarge the page and sideways scrolling to read the text. Not very mobile friendly.

The bottom line: create a mobile-friendly landing page

The jury is out on whether or not QR codes can increase inquiry response in advertising campaigns.

But from everything we know about website usability, engagement will suffer if your QR code brings people to a landing page that is not mobile-friendly. Make sure that people who arrive at the page from a smartphone can immediately see topics that will continue their interest in 5 seconds or less. Adding a QR code to an ad is easy. Creating an effective landing page is not so easy.

Test these QR codes at Sky Magazine

If you're interested in QR codes and their landing pages, take this trip. Visit the online edition of Sky Magazine (yes, for this you'll have to wade through the flip tech version) with your QR code reader in hand and visit the CUNY (p. 135) and Embry-Riddle (p.136) ads. 

Do you agree that one landing page is far more effective than the other?

New "Writing Right for the Web" Event

My first 2-day "Writing Right for the Web" Conference is set for San Diego on July 26 - 27. Check the detailed outline and register to improve your website content.

That's all for now.



Marketing online programs... An interview with Nancy Prater, Part I

By Bob on March 24, 2011 12:27 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

A New Series of Higher Education Marketing Interviews

Nancy Prater is Director of Marketing and Communications at the School of Extended Education at Ball State University. I've always been impressed with Nancy's enthusiasm for higher education marketing as well as her ability to separate substance from silliness in planning marketing activities and evaluating the results.

Nancy agreed a few weeks ago to be first in a new series of higher education marketing reports from people who have agreed to share their experiences and insights.

If you want to follow up with Nancy on anything below, you can contact her by email.

Part II: Look for the second part of Nancy's interview next Tuesday, March 29.


Nancy, tell us about your responsibilities at Ball State and how "marketing" in this position differs from your earlier marketing experiences.

  • That's a good question. I was formerly Ball State's Web site coordinator and worked out of our central marketing and communications office. In that position, I had to keep a wide perspective of ALL the various audiences Ball State serves. Now, I get to concentrate on adults learners and their specific needs. Plus, I enjoy being involved in a wider range of marketing activities. I am also learning that in a centralized university communications office, you are generally charged with only one of the four "Ps" in marketing -- promotion. But, in online and distance education, you have a chance to be more influential with the other three Ps -- product, place, and even to some extent, pricing. 

What are the major challenges you face, short-term and long-term?

  • One of our short-term goals, which I expect to be long-term, is managing growth, while maintaining our quality. We have experienced a 226 percent increase in the number of people taking online courses during the past five years, and the pace isn't slowing. At the same time, 92 percent of our online students report they are very satisfied or satisfied with the overall quality of their academic program. We don't want to lose that.
  • Another goal is helping faculty understand the value of online education. While we have professors who have embraced online teaching and are the leaders in this field, like many universities we have a large number of faculty who are unsure about this relatively new delivery method. But, the clock is not every going to be turned back. More and more students (both traditional undergraduates and adult learners) are getting turned on to the benefits and rewards of online classes.

Ball State has Twitter and Facebook sites for "Online and Distance Education." How important are these to successful recruitment?

  • You might be expecting me to say "very." But, I have to be honest and say that at this moment, while it is one more tool we have to engage prospects, we can't (yet) tie it directly to increased recruitment. We are reviewing our strategy right now with those efforts, and I think in the future will be concentrating more on engaging students in social media toward the end of the recruitment funnel -- after they have applied and been admitted.

I'm intrigued by the name used on your website: Online and Distance Education. Most universities would use "distance" or "online" but not both. Why are they combined at Ball State?

  • Well, it is still the most accurate description of what we do. Plus, it matches the most popular Web search terms used to find programs like ours -- a factor that influenced the decision to name it that a few years ago during a Web site redesign. While the majority of our programs and classes are online, we also offer many on-site courses in our distance locations in the greater Indianapolis area. I should also note that we never use our organizational name of "School of Extended Education" to our prospective students or on our Web site. Our name means something to us internally, but the more descriptive "Online and Distance Education" is more understandable to those who don't know us.

Everyone is talking about "mobile" today. Do you see mobile apps or a mobile website as important to recruiting "online and distance" students?

  • I think we will all look back in about five years, laugh, and say, "Remember when we thought we could ignore the mobile Web? What were we thinking?" We will be in the same category of those folks who said the Internet is a passing fad. Of course, that means as marketers, we are adding one more thing to our toolkit. I just hope we can let something go (think viewbook or other expensive printed pieces), but it never seems to work out that way in marketing. We just keep adopting new tools, while being too afraid to let go of the old ones.

Part II: Our interview with Nancy Prater continues Tuesday, March 29.


That's all for now

· Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html

Mobile marketing in higher education... 4 key points for student recruitment

By Bob on February 25, 2011 10:54 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Mobile marketing in higher education: a student recruitment opportunity in 2011

Is it really almost March? Indeed it is. And that tells me it is time to start thinking about updates to last year's series of mobile marketing workshops done for ACT's Enrollment Planners Conference, eduWeb2010, and the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

This year, new mobile marketing workshops are already set for J.Boye2011 in Philadelphia in May and again at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference in July.

Mobile marketing in higher education was of high interest last year and that interest is continuing to grow in 2011. This is the year where lack of a mobile marketing strategy will give a major marketing advantage to your competitors.

Key points for recruitment success

As I get ready to make the updates in March, here are key points that come to mind from a marketing perspective.

  • Finding your list of academic programs is a top task for future students. Marketers must insist that a link to a list of academic programs is clearly visible when people start on the first mobile page, whether that's an app or a mobile website. Don't compromise on this.
  • A serious danger point happens when links for a list of academic programs lead to regular website pages that are not yet mobile friendly. If your mobile content strategy does not have a priority list to make academic programs of most interest to future students mobile friendly, that's a serious deficiency. Fix it.
  • Keep the inquiry form clean and simple, even more so than on a regular website. Remember, the longer the form, the fewer people will complete it. Ask only what you need to get info back to the person making the inquiry. Few schools need to know gender, date of birth, and similar demographic data. Be ruthless about this.
  • Start now to use web analytics data from your regular website to identify pages that are seldom if ever visited. When you get to the inevitable point of building a true mobile-friendly website, you'll need objective data to limit your workload to what's of most interest to your visitors. What percent of your present web pages are irrelevant based on actual use? Nobody needs to plan to convert their entire "traditional" website to a mobile-friendly site.

Mobile Marketing Workshop May 3 in Philadelphia

Join us at the J.Boye Phildelphia 2011 conference. The higher education track is great this year, with a special international flavor that you can't find at other conferences here in the U.S.

Together with Nathan Gerber from Utah Valley University, I'll be doing a tutorial on "Mobile Communication Challenges in Higher Education: Issues, Perils, Potential." The first two hours will be an overview of what's happening in higher education, replete with best practice examples and some not-so-best practices. Nathan will close things out with a Utah Valley case study.

Register after you check the full conference agenda.

That's all for now 

·  Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html 

 

 

Higher education marketing & the future... 8 notes from 2010

By Bob on December 21, 2010 11:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Higher education marketing: a challenging future continues in 2011

Higher education marketing in 2010... what most stands out when I close my eyes and think about the past 12 months of continuity and chaos in higher education?

No special order to these notes, just taking a moment to share the highlights from client connections, webinar questions, conference presentations, professional colleagues and personal friends.

8 marketing points that are top of mind today:

  • If predictions (see "60 Minutes" from last Sunday) about the upcoming financial stress on state and local governments is even half true, we haven't nearly seen the end of financial turmoil on the public side of higher education. More cuts coming in most states. Huge in some.
  • Residential, "liberal arts" institutions that don't have enormous reputational strength (that's most of them) will continue to face price resistance. Holding enrollment levels and tuition discount rates even in the next few years will be a significant achievement. Various iterations of the "value proposition" face an increasingly difficult uphill slog.
  • The tuition discounting plague continues and is spreading from the private sector to the public sector, in part from increased public university competition for out-of-state students. That's the lesson from reading that public sector discounting neared 13 percent in 2008. It can only be higher now.
  • The "move to mobile" continues with the ongoing increase in touch-screen smartphone adoption that's making it easier to complete online tasks from 3 inch screens. Limited resources and the proverbial hesitance of higher education to change has meant slow development on the marketing side here (but lots of apps with campus bus schedules) but that's going to change in 2011. Two of my favorite leaders so far are the mobile website at College of Charleston and the complex "Good Old App" at University of Virginia.
  • Traditional websites will adapt and change, with a new emphsis on simple design and integration with social media. Is the future showing on the Langara College home page?
  • In the social media era, you really can't control what people will say about your brand. Merits of the individual programs aside, that's the lesson learned this year from "D+" at Drake University, "Makers All" at Purdue University, and "AmericanWonks" at American University.
  • What future for the for-profit sector? It isn't going to vanish, but the time of super-fast stock growth beloved of investment advisors isn't returning in 2011. That's a good thing. If for-profits are genuine in changing to more careful admissions and increased attention on retention, both the stock holders and students will benefit in the long fun. The correction in 2010 was overdue.
  • Online learning will continue to expand as a degree option, for "traditional" students and everyone else, as faculty come to terms with it. For-profits dominate online enrollment now. Efforts at schools like the University of Kentucky to share revenue with faculty who develop online courses may change that.

Humpty Dumpty

Higher education, of course, isn't going away. But we can expect more change to move through the system as public universities and private colleges continue to adjust to the reality that the happy resource times before 2008 are not returning.

Higher education marketing will also adapt, although there is still an undue amount of time spent talking about how better delivery of "brand" and "value" messages might restore the bounty of the past. "Brand" is important. People certainly want "value" at the right price point. But nothing is going to put the Humpty Dumpty that fell off the wall in 2008 back together again.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

2010 was a wonderful year. 2011 is primed for a fine start. Thanks to everyone, from marvelous clients to new and continuing newsletter subscribers and Twitter followers, to colleagues and friends, for helping to make that happen.

That's all for now 

·  Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html 

Mobile marketing... the most important element

By Bob on October 26, 2010 6:05 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Mobile marketing websites: commit to task completion priority

This is a week to "think mobile" as I work to update my mobile marketing tutorial presentation for the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education on November 7. Should be a rapid 3.5 hours and I'm really looking forward to meeting the people who are signed up for it.

A University Web Developers discussion last Thursday and Friday gave fresh insight into the technical challenges of building a mobile website in response to two questions from Karole Schroeder at Tarleton State University:

  • How are you detecting a mobile device and directing the user to a mobile version?
  • What (technical) standard are you using for your mobile version?

Information, advice, and opinion came along from 10 people. As you'd expect, the technical approach varies among campuses and depends very much on the system already in use.

From a marketing communications perspective, two elements stood out to me:

Mobile sites: start at the regular home page or a mobile-friendly page?

  • First, there are different opinions as to whether or not a person accessing a mobile site should arrive first at the regular home page with an option to go to the mobile version or should be sent directly to the mobile version (with an option to visit the regular site).
  • I agree with those who believe it is best to send people directly to the mobile version. The reason is simple: if you are aiming for a strong first impression, that is not likely to come from squinting at a traditional home page on an iPhone or Android screen. Create a new, simple mobile-friendly home page and get people to it as quickly as possible.

The most important element: reducing content for easier task completion

  • Second was a point mentioned by Frank Adelle at Emory University: "A key to doing this (creating a mobile site) successfully seems to be focusing on only the content users will need." Amen!

Adelle hit on a seldom mentioned but key point in creating a mobile site: the opportunity to leave behind the massive amount of content that is seldom or never visited. Focus instead on the key tasks that your primary audiences will want to do on the site. If content isn't needed to get those tasks done, why waste time and dollars adapting it to a mobile.

Excessive content makes quick, clear navigation for easy task completion more difficult to achieve. A combination of inertia, scarce resources, and politics makes eliminating web content a special challenge. Creators of mobile-friendly sites should leverage the scarce resource element to leave behind mission statements, messages from presidents and deans, and pages that speak of the dedication to student service of the offices that created them.

Important for student recruitment: home page link to academic majors

If you have responsibility for student recruitment, remember the most important task for most potential students visiting your site for the first time: finding out what majors you offer. Don't give up until you get a direct link from the mobile home page to your list of academic majors.

Three places that get this right:

· College of Charleston at http://m.cofc.edu: "Academic" is 2nd of 8 primary links.

· University of Evansville at www.evansville.edu/mobile/: "Areas of Study" is 4th of 9 links.

· University of Chicago at www.uchicago.edu/m: "Academics" is 3rd of 13 menu links. 

That's all for now 

·  Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Marketing... Notes from an AMA Luncheon

By Bob on September 10, 2010 8:07 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Mobile Marketing: Your Brand Reputation Depends on Easy Task Completion

Almost ready this morning to travel down from Albany on Amtrak on what should be a fine, sunny day along the Hudson River. Beautiful two hours or so... if you get a seat on the right side of the train. Literally.

But before heading for the station. a few notes from yesterday's presentation for the American Marketing Association's Captial Region chapter. And thanks to Zone 5 here in Albany for sponsoring this special event for higher education marketers. Yesterday's presentation is online now at Slideshare.

Here are the notes, based on questions that we talked about yesterday:

  • The best way to make your website stand out from those of your competitors is to make it easier to use. Website success is all about task completion, not how pretty the site looks.
  • Your brand reputation rises or falls with the experience visitors have on your website.
  • In 18 surveys to find out what people think about college and university websites after they use them, one complaint always stand out: "confusing menus and links." Another area that is almost never a topic of high complaint: "visual appeal." The message: spend far more time on site navigation (based on top tasks people want to do on the site) than on the beauty of the site.
  • Mobile marketing really is here. If you have to make the choice, spend time and resources to develop a mobile-friendly version of your regular website rather than apps. Plan now to have a mobile-friendly site up and runnning by next summer.
  • If you want your mobile site to have strong impact on potential students, make "acaemic programs" a top link right from the mobile home page. The "top task" for potential students when they visit your site is to find out what academic programs you offer. Make it easy for them to to that.
  • Don't ignore your "regular" website. Some tasks will always be best done on a regular site rather than a mobile site. And some people will just prefer to visit your site from home or office computers. Make sure that visitors can quickly find the task most important to them.
  • A last point. Someone asked if messages from presidents and deans were important. We had a good laugh about that one. If politics allow, don't plan to include unimportant content like that on your new mobile site. Put mission statement in that "leave behind" category as well.

And now, Amtrak and the Hudson beckon.

That's all for now 

·  Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html 

 

Mobile websites... student recruitment marketing not a priority?

By Bob on August 26, 2010 5:48 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Mobile websites: marketing for student recruitment not yet a strong feature

Since the 2010 Noel-Levitz E-Expectations survey came out not long ago, more than a few people seem surprised by two points: the high level of interest on the part of potential students in learning what academic programs are offered and the high number (about 23%) who said they were visiting higher education websites from mobile phones.

That's the new and growing reality: more people are using mobile devices to access websites. And the rate of use will increase as more "mobile friendly" sites are built. 

Interest in academic programs shouldn't be a surprise either. You can't expect possible new students of any age to be interested in your school if you don't offer the academic program(s) that interest them. For many new visitors, their most important first task at your site is to find that program list.

"Academics" on the Mobile Home Page

Getting quickly to a list of academic programs isn't always easy from the home page on traditional websites. This week I decided to see how easy it was from the home (or entry) page on mobile sites. Nothing "scientific" about this. I looked at 7 universities available on the MobileAwesomeness site for an initial sample and then added more that were on the first page of a Google search for "university mobile websites."

The result: you can't get direct from the home page to something like "academic programs" from most of these sites. Navigation itself is simple: you scan a group of icons (sometimes) or a list of words (most often) and start to navigate the site. See for yourself when you visit the sites listed here.

Academics from the Mobile Home Page (or an immediately available "menu" from the home page)

· College of Charleston at http://m.cofc.edu: "Academic" is 2nd of 8 primary links.

· University of Evansville at www.evansville.edu/mobile/: "Areas of Study" is 4th of 9 links.

· University of Chicago at www.uchicago.edu/m: "Academics" is 3rd of 13 menu links. 

No "Academics" or "Academic Programs" Link for the Mobile Home Page

· Colgate University at http://mobile.colgate.edu: missing from 12 topics.

· Duke University at http://m.tamu.edu/: not with 11 links.

· Pittsburgh State University at http://m.pittstate.edu: not among 8 links.

· Texas A&M University at http://m.tamu.edu/: not with 7 topics.

· University of Alabama at http://m.ua.edu/i: not one of 11 topics.

· University of Southern California at http://mobile.usc.edu: not one of 9 topics.

· University of Texas Austin at http://mobile.utexas.edu/: not with 11 links.

· University of Texas Dallas at www.utdallas.edu/mobile: not among 5 topics.

Notes: Mobile for Student Recruitment

 

When you read the topics that are included on these home pages, one natural conclusion is that the highlighted content areas are done primarily for internal use or for other people who are already "friends" of the university. The "marketing" element, especially as it applies to student recruitment, isn't yet strong.

That's easy to change. Adding a prominent link to "Academics" or "Academic Programs" would fit easily enough on most of these sites. Right now there isn't much pressure to do that. If mobile devices continue to grow in importance as access tools to higher education websites, that's likely to change.

Get ahead of your competition. Plan to add a link to a list of "Academic Programs" on your mobile home page soon. 

Mobile Marketing Presentation on SlideShare

The eduWeb2010 version of my mobile marketing workshop, "Mobile in the Marketing Mix: Crafting a New Communications Strategy," is online now at SlideShare.

Mobile Marketing with the American Marketing Association: September 22

Register for "Getting to the Core of of Social Media and Mobile Marketing for Higher Ed Institutions" virtual event.

That's all for now 

·  Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

· Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html 

 

 

« Integrated Marketing | Main Index | Archives | Non-profit marketing »

Categories

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 4.21-en

Tag Cloud

Search

About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the Mobile Marketing category.

Integrated Marketing is the previous category.

Non-profit marketing is the next category.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.