This is part two in our series on advanced digital experiences for higher education institutions. In part one, we covered the key UX and communication components that HigherEd websites require.
In this second part, we’ll explore how to create compelling experiences for prospects and students, and provide them with the best learning environment, focusing on tips and recommendations based on the original article. We’ll follow these up in part three with a few examples of widely used platforms which are widely used for prestigious higher education websites and can as such best provide the required features.
How to provide a compelling UX for prospects & students
A great user experience is a must for any kind of website or application in the digital era, and that holds especially true in higher education where the digital native target audiences are not just used to top-notch performance but actually expect it; if not even demand it.
In the first article, we already went through the main features for students and prospective students:
Ensure good performance; you can use various free or proprietary analytics tools, and you should also always refer to Google’s Core Web Vitals score.
However, you should also balance that performance with creativity and uniqueness. In a digital world full of near copy-paste design uniformity, you’ll need creative ways to reach prospective students and engage existing ones. Making use of diverse and engaging content is a great way to stand out and highlight why your institution is the best choice.
One other factor that we heavily highlighted in the original marketing is actually marketing & messaging to students and prospects rather than for people versed in marketing. Again, you can make use of analytics, but also conduct surveys to gather find-hand information, or even try to hire former students who are still in touch with their student experience for these kinds of roles.
So – what are your options?
Of course, you could try to rely on in-house experts for the entire website design and development process. However, higher education institutions frequently lack the design & development capacities needed to provide a great digital experience to generations that expect nothing less.
Your best bet is to forge partnerships with outside service providers to take care of design and development work (in some cases, even partnering with a marketing agency could be the best choice), since you likely won’t have and/or need a full in-house development team with the right skills in the right platform you need (considering you even know what platform you need – the right development partner can help you with that as well!)
On top of everything, the same development partner will happily accept a long-term partnership for any maintenance, bug fixing and update issues you might encounter post-launch, either full-time on a case-by-case basis.
When it comes to technology choices, you will also need to do a thorough assessment of what platform(s) you have already been using, how successful they have been in a changing world, and, consequently, if you need to switch to a different platform that’s better suited for the digitally native generation (most often even just an update to the latest version of the existing platform would do the trick, since HigherEd institutions tend to use older versions of popular systems such as Drupal).
Consider which features you need to prioritize and determine how your current platform matches up with some of the top competitors:
Great multisite & multilingual capabilities
An intranet or another form of internal communication for students (can be an external service, but still integrated with main sites to make sure data is aligned and resource sharing is easily enabled)
A robust backend ecosystem to support content creation, timely messaging and other key features for a successful HigherEd website, as well as good security coverage
A focus on accessibility and inclusivity, based on the idea that both education and the Open Web should be equally easily provided and accessible to anyone
Wrapping up
The first two articles in this series focused on highlighting the key components of great HigherEd website experiences and providing tips for delivering these experiences for anyone engaging digitally with a higher education institution.
In the third and final instalment of the series, we’ll be presenting two open source platforms that drive great experiences for HigherEd and e-learning. Make sure you stay tuned, and feel free to reach out directly if you need a reliable development partner for your HigherEd website.
