How to Quickly Improve your Website to Impact 2017 Enrollments

Editor's Notes

• #2: Copyright needs to be added to all slides. Update hashtag to #digitalnative Need a new image to represent the digital native – I like the image found here A LOT: http://blog.blackboard.com/wp-content/uploads/Digital-Native-717x359.jpg
• #5: Would like to update this background with something that aligns with the design for the first page
• #7: DA SAYS: stole image from Google Images! Don’t use!!! Owner: Megan So what is a quick win? To us, a quick win is something that is relatively LOW EFFORT and HIGH VALUE and your website and digital assets are usually full of these. Of course, there are plenty of things that are High Effort and Extremely High Value on the website -> we’ll save those for another webinar. But today is about things that, you can do today with tools that you likely already have. Today is about action. And we hope what share with you today, can, at the very least, get you started. Quick wins can come from a variety of different way – they are often not dramatic or big reveals
• #8: Owner: Megan Before we get into the technical groundings of the website,
• #9: DA SAYS: @Megan - Took this from the Vin and Jamie meeting Owner: MeganSo what are the expectations of today’s student? Well based on the latest research by Google and Nielson 90% of students will use the internet to research64% of highschool seniors were on college websites, researching77% of education seekers will visit at least 2 weeks, and often times much more, before they’ll actually take action on your site.
• #10: DA SAYS: @Megan - Took this from the Vin and Jamie meeting Owner: Megan And 50% of those prospective students are going to do it on their mobile devices, they EXPECT to be able to do it on their mobile. And 50% of visitors already report a negative experiences on mobile And this leads to negative perceptions. Bad websites translate into bad feelings. And slow websites make bad websites and bad experiences.
• #11: DA SAYS: stole image from Google Images! Don’t use!!! Owner: Dan But first, let’s talk about website and technology foundation. This presentation is all about quick wins, but it’s really important to stop and think about “what are we building on?” It’s like a house, we can give you ideas about paint and improving fixtures, and yes, that may improve the curb appeal, but if the foundation is crumbling or if the plumbing is leaking behind the walls, a quick win doesn’t last very long or go very far. So where do you start? Well the first step is understanding the technology stack on your website, what are the tools in the tool box? Do you have cement foundation? Is the wall plaster or dry wall?
• #12: Owner: Dan One of my favorite tools to inventory a technology stack on a website is BuiltWith. A simple Google Search of “BuiltWith for Chrome” should find it. Once the tool is installed, visit your website (or any website for that matter) and click on the builtwith icon in the upper right hand corner of your browser.
• #13: DA SAYS: Let me know what school you want for an example and I can use that and get new screenshots Owner: Dan A dropdown will appear and it will show you all the detected technologies that are present. Great way to see what tools you have, and answer questions like What is my Website Content Management System? Do we have a Marketing Automation System? Which version of this plugin do we have? A lot of times you’ll find tools you weren’t even aware that you had!
• #14: Owner: Dan But, as your looking at your technology profile, it’s important to recognize that there is an extraordinarily large number of marketing / website vendors, platforms, systems in the space. And EVERY Website is different. After personally looking at 100’s of websites, I’ve yet to see two that were exactly the same. Some use this version of this, but not this, or this part of their website has this but not that. But one consistency I see time and time again….
• #15: Owner: Dan Is that most EDU website have a tool called Google Analytics installed. According to research that I’ve done, 95% of known websites with a .EDU have some form of Google Analytics installed on the site. For those of you not familiar with Google Analytics, Google Analytics is a website analytics tool… You setup and access your account from analytics.google.com You install a code snippet across your entire website And GA will begin to track, which pages are being viewed, where does your traffic come from? Which sources / Channels? Regions? Demographics? GA is crticial tool that should absolutely be leveraged, a lot of the tactics we outline today rely on a GA foundation. It’s an amazing tool, and frankly under-leveraged in higher education… but it’s important to remember, just because you have Google Analytics doesn’t mean it’s collecting the right data. The right data lead to the right insight. So today I want to show you some quick wins to ensure GA is setup properly.
• #16: Owner: Dan I love Chrome plugins, a plugin I love is a tool called “Tag Assistant” – it’s a Google product.
• #17: DA SAYS: Let me know what school you want for an example and I can use that and get new screenshots Owner: Dan Once it’s installed, it allows you to check to make sure GA is on every page. If GA is missing on parts of your web experience, when a visitor clicks to that page without GA it strips out attribution. Since Google Analytics wasn’t able to track the page, we don’t know where the origin was for the visitor – Facebook? Google? News mention? Tag Assistant allows you to make sure Google Analytics is on all pages
• #18: Owner: Dan As you are making a recording, be sure to ensure that the SAME PROPERTY is being used across your prospective student pages. Google Analytics doesn’t track across PROPERTIES. As in a visitor in one property is not tracked as the same one as another property. If you want to be able to track and answers questions ACROSS sub-domains, websites, they have to use the same property. This is by far the biggest pitfall we see in Higher Ed.
• #19: Owner: Dan Our last foundation GA quick win is around ensuring that GOALS or CONVERSIONS have been defined in Google Analytics. Google tracks web pages, but it doesn’t track success unless you tell Google Analytics what success looks like – is it a thank you page? A certain action? A form submission? Once a conversion is defined in Google Analytics. You can see how many conversions or form fills come from search engines, certain content, channels, sources / mediums, campaigns, virtually anything. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. When it comes to quick wins, you have to make sure that you have a way and a method to track success.
• #20: Owner: Dan So to recap, use Tag Assistant to make sure GA is on pagesSecondly, ensure that you are using ONE property And lastly, make sure Google Analytics is setup to track conversion to track success.
• #21: DAY SAYS: I think this section would be great for Megan, stole image from Collegis Website Owner: MeganThe prospective student experience is key to recruitment effort… how a college interacts with a prospective student, what the campus tour is like, support materials, admissions staff all play a key role in help a prospective student to actually become a student…  A website should convey Who you are What you stand for How to engage A big part of that prospective student journey is the website. The website is one of the first stops someone makes when wanting to learn more about the college… - Finding answers - Finding event schedules - Finding information about programs / majors - Study abroad- Student life. Your website is a portal to the instution… and there is nothing more irritating that navigating that experience and running into this…
• #22: Owner: Megan
• #23: DAY SAYS: I think this section would be great for Megan, stole image from Collegis Website Owner: MeganWhenever I am starting out on a website,I conduct a three second test – helps to get the at a glance perspective of the website. Keep in mind that prospective students are also using the 3 second test when comparing and considering their school options Who you are What you stand for How to engage Write down your initial obersation 
• #24: DA SAYS: stole from Google Images Owner: Megan We’ve all been there, a slow website. You’re shopping, researching, looking for information and then the experience literally grinds to a halt or crawls (we’re actually not sure which one is worse). But we do know that website SPEED is an opportunity for a quick win. Making sure your website meets the expectations of today’s digital prospective student. 
• #25: Owner: Megan So is your website slow? Does it satisfy the mobile visitor? Here is a way to check. Firstly, Google ‘Page Speed Insights’ that will bring you to a tool that looks like this. Input your website URL and Google will analyze it for you.
• #26: Owner: Megan DA SAYS: Let me know what school you want for an example and I can use that and get new screenshots (URL in search box) Google makes it pretty cut and dry. They give you a score something out of a 100 and ways to improve that score. We recommend shooting for at least X / 100. When our partners have done that we’ve seen – increased conversion, more content consumed, and better search engine placements (google flat out says it favors FAST websites).
• #27: Owner: Megan Google will do a good job of giving you places to start, but here are some common things we see and also some tips Google doesn’t always give. Reduce the number of images Compress images Eliminate unnecessary scripts Remove tools that you don’t use Enable browser caching
• #28: Owner: Megan Over the past few years, there have been pushes by Google to help ensure that Mobile has shifted the way that website are designed and within education, it is important to have an understanding of the role that mobile plays on your website
• #29: Owner: Megan Google will do a good job of giving you places to start, but here are some common things we see and also some tips Google doesn’t always give. Reduce the number of images Compress images Eliminate unnecessary scripts Remove tools that you don’t use Enable browser caching
• #30: Owner: Megan Google will do a good job of giving you places to start, but here are some common things we see and also some tips Google doesn’t always give. Reduce the number of images Compress images Eliminate unnecessary scripts Remove tools that you don’t use Enable browser caching
• #31: Owner: Dan So to recap, use Tag Assistant to make sure GA is on pagesSecondly, ensure that you are using ONE property And lastly, make sure Google Analytics is setup to track conversion to track success.
• #32: Owner: Dan DA SAYS: Any website can go here with search box. Your website is there to help prospective students, students, faculty, parents find information. And to make finding things easier, most modern websites have a search bar (typically) in the right-hand corner. Search is a very NATURAL way to find things, we do it everyday – check your Google search history and you’ll see what we mean. But often times, the prominent search bar gets neglected. Is it working? What are people searching for? Are they finding what they need? 
• #33: Owner: Dan Luckily, Google Analytics actually offers a way to track these interactions. Assuming Google Analytics is setup properly, if you navigate to your account, on the left-hand side, under ‘Behavior’ should be a section called Site Search. In this section Google reports WHAT your visitors are looking for. It’ll tell you how many search, how times they “re-search” (as in they refine their search to get better results) and how much time they spend on the site AFTER searching. 
• #34: Owner: Dan Clicking on individual search terms will show you a timeline of how often the search happens and also how many people EXIT after searching. We recommend grouping keywords and comparing search behavior. Does one group find answers better than others? Are people leaving after making a search? And of course, it helps to do the search yourself inspired by what you find in Google Analytics. Are you happy with the results?
• #35: Owner: Dan Our advice, identify searches and improve the results. You can do this by identifying top results, finding keywords with high exit rates and simply search those keywords and see what the experience is like. Use this as inspiration to improve the tool.
• #36: DA SAYS: Stole the image off CollegisEducation.com Owner: MeganEarlier we talked about defining conversion in Google Analytics – is it an application complete? A visit campus for a tour form? What does success look like? What do you WANT visitors to do? The whole reason we go through so much trouble to define success is so we can improve it. So we can improve conversion. The goal is to get visitors to do MORE. We’re not increasing traffic, we’re simply making more happen with the traffic we already have. 
• #37: Owner: Megan One method to improve conversion is to use a technique called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) . Here’s a simple illustration on how it works in higher ed. Version A. is your existing website. It’s your control and let’s say that you have a 3% conversion rate – 3% of visitors will sign up for a tour. Now, we think we can get more visitors to sign-up for a tour with better content. We create Verision B. It’s the variation. And we actually don’t know the conversion rate. Using a Conversion Rate Optimization tool. We split the traffic 50% of the traffic goes to each. The CRO tool, then measures conversions and conversion rate and ultimately determines which one PERFORMS better with a statistical confidence. The variation in this example was a 4% conversion rate. That means that for every 100 visitors 1 more will convert.
• #38: Owner: Megan DA SAYS: Robbed this from the last webinar I did with Susan and Janyce. Not sure if we need approval. Here’s what it looks like in higher ed.
• #39: Owner: Megan By serving these two versions of the pages to visitors, Optimizely was able to tell us, with 95% statistical confidence, that the new version enticed 84% more visitors to inquire. Optimizely answered the question "Does this work better than this?" And we had our answer - 84% better.
• #40: Owner: Megan
• #41: Owner: I think it’d be cool to break this into our respective parts, IE: Dan does first two bullets, Megan does page speed insights, Dan does Site Search and Megan takes it home with CRO. NEEDS UPDATE!!
• #42: DA SAYS: Please no questions about tweets I made in the past, I will just deny them by saying “I never said that.”