Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Colleges and universities are akin to a small town and serve a vast plurality of people.  A college website, being its digital soul, serves a multitude of functions for its many audiences: prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, faculty & staff, donors, employers, research partners, foundations, media, financial institutions, and nearby communities at large. In this blog post, I’ll limit my focus on tips and best practices for user experience design of college websites for increasing enrollment. It all begins with six essential questions prospective student have User experience is human experience. Prospective students are on their personal hero’s journey. Beyond their personal needs and wants, they have dreams they hope to fulfill, ambitions they wish to achieve, and challenges they aim to overcome. Ultimately, they want to enroll in a college which can give their spirit a fighting chance to blossom and thrive. Let’s assume that a prospective student has just arrived at a college website after gathering preliminary … Continue reading

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Olds College of Agriculture & Technology sits in the center of Alberta, at the northern edge of North America’s Wheat Belt, a vast swath of the Great Plains. The school’s Smart Agriculture Ecosystem — with labs, 3,600 acre Smart Farm and researchers — plays an outsized role in advancing a range of digital agriculture innovations designed to sustain Canada’s position as one the world’s largest agricultural producers and exporters. The Olds College leadership team turned to Elliance to translate a new public-facing name and brand position into a full website relaunch focused on clear business goals: Grow the number, geographic reach and diversity of its prospect pool. Increase research funding, industry partnerships, major gift donors. Leverage digital content as a catalytic force to secure non-branded, organic page one Google rankings The Elliance website team prioritized the following site features and outcomes: Transform oldscollege.ca from a quiet enrollment website into a true digital content platform and conversion machine, capable of expanding the reach and … Continue reading

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Today, more than any other marketing touch point, a website is the digital soul of an institution. All roads lead to it. As a leading website design agency for colleges and universities, higher education institutions frequently come to us to perform website audit so they can develop a plan to improve it. These are the ten dimensions of our website audit: 1. Brand AuditFirst and foremost, we ensure that your brand essence and brand values are infused into the entire website experience. We evaluate consistent application of brand identity, color and typography. 2. User Experience AuditUser experience is important to both human beings and search engine bots. Great websites are intuitive, easy to use, readable and engender trust. Their persistent navigation and prominent calls-to-action systems put the users in control. The Sitemap (org structure) and Wireframes (page schematics) – not just design and copy – create a logical content hierarchy and make a compelling argument. Balancing logic and emotion, stories and facts, they … Continue reading

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The Elliance higher education marketing practice has grown enrollment, endowment and reputation for over 100 colleges and universities including 10 medical schools and healthcare institutions in all 4 major medical traditions o western medicine. Included below are a few samples of our agency work we have enjoyed delivering for each medical tradition: O S T E O P A T H I C     M E D I C I N E   Transforming Lives. Transforming Generations. University of the Incarnate Word (UIW), a leading Hispanic-serving institution, owes its existence to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, a congregation from France that responded to urgent public health and education needs in South Texas following the U.S. Civil War.  San Antonio and South Texas face severe shortages of culturally competent health professionals — primary care doctors, optometrists, pharmacists, physical therapists and nurses. That shortage, along with entrenched socioeconomic disadvantages, combine to produce a 20-year life span discrepancy between … Continue reading

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Making a business case for investing in a comprehensive website redesign to ROI-minded, quant-driven cabinet members is vastly different than making a case to marketing leaders who intuitively understand the value of a great website. For quantitatively inclined cabinet members, here are five ROI metrics that we have used to justify the investment in a comprehensive website redesign: 1. Better Student Quality: Fortifying program pages and the “why us” pages motivates better-fit students to raise their hands, dissuading wrong-fits from applying. You should expect to see conversion rates improve by as much as 25%. 2. Reduced Bounce Rate: Improving page architecture results in engaged traffic to your website. This should reduce your website bounce rate so it sits between 20% and 30%. The industry average exceeds 50%. 3. Stronger Google Rankings: Baking search engine thinking into every phase of redesign enhances your website’s Google rankings. One year after relaunch, you should see an increase in search engine traffic by 25% … Continue reading

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The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990/2008 (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require colleges and universities to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to programs, services and activities. This extends well beyond making sidewalks, entryways and classrooms accessible. It includes websites too. Why has this topic become important lately? Growth of non-traditional student population, people spending as much time in virtual environments as built ones, legislation catching up, and ready availability of assistive technologies are all fueling interest and greater scrutiny in this area. A recent New York Times article covered the story of individuals and law firms from around the country who have begun to make a lucrative business out of demanding compliance from public institutions, and taking legal action against those who don’t. Education Week featured a story about a disability advocate in Michigan who filed 500 complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which is mandated to demand compliance when … Continue reading

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In working with over 100 colleges in the last 25 years, we have learned that website projects are a catalyst for transforming a college — stakeholders are aligned, power structures are reconsidered, the organization is energized, a new inflection point is created, and destiny becomes attainable. To realize the true promise of redesigning your website, five essentials are necessary: Wise Strategy Revenue Strategy, Communication Strategy and Search Engine Ranking Strategy are the three building blocks of a Website Strategy. In redesigning your website, these three components must be orchestrated, prioritized and baked into every aspect of development and design. Ultimately, you become the story you choose to tell, and that story begins with wise strategy. 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. Responsive, mobile first, and beautiful design deepens meaning, delights … Continue reading

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In our 20+ year history of building websites, almost all our clients were initially skeptical about the return on investment from a website redesign; they underestimated the impact the new website would have on their business. After a year or two of relaunch, almost all the clients became believers. They shared comments with us that had three recurring themes. Here they are: 1. A great website creates a strategic inflection point, whereby a business starts experiencing a major change due to clarity realized during the website strategy development process. 2. A great website changes organizational trajectory, when a business sheds an old skin and puts on a new skin which re-energizes the prospects, customers and internal stakeholders. 3. A great website realizes a new organizational destiny, whereby the organization musters the courage to unapologetically pursue its vision. We often hear stories from skeptical prospects about their previous website redesigns not liberating prosperity. What’s the difference between their past experiences and … Continue reading

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We recently launched the William Woods University website with the thought that it might be touted as one of the best responsive design college websites. Our guidelines were simple: 1. Authenticity 2. Simplicity 3. Integrity 4. Findability 5. Usability 6. Beauty How did we do? What do you think? and in responsive mode Visit the responsive website at www.williamwoods.edu If you are seeking college website design agency, please see our work and consider partnering with us.

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Elliance is proud to launch the first responsive website for naturopathic medicine in North America for Southwest College for Naturopathic Medicine (SCNM). By outsmarting the competition and with its history of firsts, SCNM has once again proven that it is indeed the most innovative college for naturopathic medicine. The entire process of launching the website took almost one year, the four months being spent on articulating their new brand position: “Simply Inspiring”. Our interviews with SCNM faculty, students and patients made us realize that SCNM is a storehouse of inspiring stories of patients being healed by craft-minded Nauturoapthic Doctors. We also met a wide array of alumni who were respectable leaders living lives as ND’s, as researchers for Neutrceuticals, as authors of ground breaking work in Naturopathic healing, and as members of integrative medicine practices. The new website is the first expression of the new brand position and comprises of two parts. The first part is the website for the … Continue reading

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