Elaine Shannon, Web Developer and User Interface Specialist – St. Mary’s University, is one of the 12 presenters of the 2018 Higher Ed WEBSITES Conference.
In this 4-question interview, Elaine tells us about the best website advice ever, the most challenging part of the job of a higher ed web pro, a great web tool and shares a top 3 of favorite higher ed websites.
1) What is the best advice you’ve ever been given about higher ed websites?
The best advice I’ve ever received regarding higher ed websites (or really, any website) is that you have to tailor your writing toward your intended audience.
Alison West’s 2015 HighEdWeb presentation, “I shouldn’t need a doctorate to read your website,” showed not just research to debunk the theory that prospects and their parents want to see high-level language to instill confidence that an institution will provide a high-quality education, but also showcased several tools to help monitor and adjust content to target the sweet spot between simple wording and prestigious appeal.
In addition to word choice, this builds on the idea that chunking up content with headings, lists, and other formatting serves to make it easier for visitors to skim through and find the information they’re looking for.
2) How do you cope with the most challenging part of your job?
The most challenging part of my job is achieving consensus.
In any institution, there are stakeholders at all levels and in different departments, each with legitimate concerns and opinions on what the website should do, how it should look, and who should publish content. A big part of my job is advocating for the end user and reminding internal stakeholders that we have systems for everything: our institutional website is designed for prospective students and the public, while our intranet is designed to house internal documents and information for our campus community. Because each website maintains such a tight focus, we have relatively few content editors so that they can be trained in our branding guidelines, accessibility, SEO, and other best practices.
3) What is your favorite tool?
My favorite new web tool is Google Data Studio.
Google Analytics is a little overwhelming for most of our team, so I’m experimenting with creating printable reports that give them just the right information in just the right format to be useful. While dashboards have been available for a long time, we’ve found Data Studio works better as many of our team members feel more comfortable with a printed report in their hands. It also makes it easy to archive past reports for quick comparison.
4) What are your top 3 favorite higher ed websites?
- Indiana University’s Web Style Guide
I love how IU has gathered all of their style guides into one living, breathing document. Rather than searching for a PDF or referring to several different documents, vendors and internal stakeholders can visit this website and have the most up-to-date information at their fingertips. Whether you need basic visual style guidelines, branding information, or even specific code blocks, you can grab it all instantly from this simple, clean website.
- St. Mary’s University’s Programs
I’m a little biased, but I love our “search by interest” tool to help prospective students find degrees that they might be interested in. Realizing that many prospects have no idea what major or career field they want to enter, we built this tool by adding “interest” keywords to each of our academic programs. We also monitor the searches made and continue to add appropriate keywords to our programs, so the tool is continually improving.
- University of Notre Dame
I like how Notre Dame’s content reflows effortlessly to fit any screen size, so on huge developer’s monitors it doesn’t feel like I’m reading one narrow little column down the middle. They’ve also chosen to feature a number of beautiful photos of their buildings front and center, so you get a feel for what it might be like to walk through campus.
A conference focusing on higher ed WEBSITES?
The 2018 Higher Ed WEBSITES Conference (now available on-demand!) is a must for higher ed web professionals and teams looking for inspiration, ideas and best practices to kick off their summer projects.
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the 1st edition of the Higher Ed WEBSITES Conference say about the experience.
Tags: HEW18, Higher Ed News