Higher Education Website Development Agency for Colleges and Universities Shares its Best Practices

High-performing higher ed websites are built with a perfect harmony of code, content and design. As the digital soul of an university, a website is a strategic asset that grows enrollment, endowment and reputation. Our agency has worked with colleges navigating these waters, and we’ve developed a framework for aligning design, code, content, and strategy to support institutional business goals. In this post, I’ll share the best practices that make that alignment real.

Best Practices We Use for Website Development Projects

Define Quantifiable Goals

Grow university enrollment, endowment and reputation. Create an inflection point for the university with a new website that realizes its tactical goals and strategic vision gathered by an in-depth discovery process.

Deploy Wise Strategy

Bake revenue strategy, communication strategy and search/generative engine ranking strategy into every aspect of a new website.

Activate Beautiful Design

Strategy is invisible. Good design makes it visible. Milton Glaser once said “There are only three reactions to a piece of design: no, yes or WOW! Wow is one to aim for.” We agree. We build a responsive, adaptive, ADA compliant, mobile first website that is beautiful and deepens meaning, delighting 10+ stakeholders and influencing the Google and Generative AI bots to rank a website on page 1.

Mobilize Smart Technology

In proportion to the size of the institution and its web/content teams:

• Deploy the right CMS with seamless integration with third party systems
• Develop nimble, mobile-first and responsive code
• Support rich interactive features the right systems architecture for content management
• Activate the right level of customization and workflows for various internal stakeholders
• Comply with ADA and WCAG 2.2 Level AA standards
• Write meta-data and code to fortify Google/Bing rankings and AI/Engine inclusions
• Host the site on a Tier-1 hosting environment
• Offer ongoing support and maintenance to keep the site current and secure

Use Talented People

Use a craft-minded team of specialists — strategists, information architects, designers, writers, search/AI marketers, developers, systems architects and project managers — to pay meticulous attention to details, to collaborate effectively internally and with the college team pushing each other to up each other’s game and liberate greatness, training the college team, and providing training guide.

Leverage Rational Process

Use deft diplomacy to involve and align key internal stakeholders, devise a smart content plan, modernize institutional brand story, manage critical site launch details so past SEO rankings are migrated forward while new ones are secured, manage the project via project milestones and weekly status calls, and providing ongoing hosting and support. 

Examples of Recent Higher Ed Website Launches

Our recent website launches include Alfred State College, Olds College, Saint Vincent College, University of the Incarnate Word and its five health schools, Hartford University for Peace and Religion, Capitol Technology University, Seton Hill University, and all 12 schools of the Catholic University of America.

If you are seeking a transformative higher education marketing agency or a college website design agency, please see our work and consider partnering with us.