In this 4-question interview, Kris 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 was “do everything you can to better understand the needs and expectations of your target audience.”
I think this is especially applicable to Higher Education, because we have a tendency to treat our websites like an org chart. We’ll put the tuition listing on the Bursar’s Office website and burry academic program information on College or Department websites. This makes sense for us internally but makes finding the information extremely hard for our target audience.
2) How do you cope with the most challenging part of your job?
Balancing innovation and ongoing support has been a challenge for me. As we all know, a modern website can be extremely complicated. Every new page, website, and application we create needs a long-term strategy for content management, software patches, system integrations, support and more.
Balancing the ongoing support needs for pre-existing systems while finding time to do research and innovate has been a tricky process.
3) What is your favorite tool?
Hands down, Basecamp is my favorite.
It’s an online project management and collaboration tool that organizes our to-do lists, discussions, calendars, chats and files within a project. It also has a “client side” that allows us to pull campus clients into the tool for larger, more complicated projects. Best part – it’s extremely affordable and intuitive.
4) What are your top 3 favorite higher ed websites?
- SNHU
I am a long-time believer that our academic programs are our products. Southern New Hampshire University really takes this idea home by organizing their site information architecture around their academic programs making it really easy for users to find the program they are looking for.
- University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno has done a great job with their top-level global navigation pages (i.e., about, admissions, academics, etc). These pages use standardized elements to keep the look of the pages consistent while also maintaining a great balance between images and text. The pages do a great job telling the UNR story through short text, infographics, videos and full-bleed images.
- Mississippi College
The Mississippi College website is beautiful! They have done a fantastic job incorporating really interesting photography within a functional and intuitive layout. To top it off, they use some very subtle CSS transitions that give it a really polished look and feel.
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.