A friend of mine recently pointed to me to the website of a school who shall remain nameless. Their bloggers are front and center on the school's homepage. If I click over to the "future students" link, there they are again, alongside the school's link to their YouTube account and the area to "ask a question". I also know they are active their their students on Facebook and are passionate about utilizing social networking in their admissions process.
But you know what was conspicuously missing from all of this? The ability for an interested student to fill out a form to get on the school's mailing list. I kid you not. And even for two people that are rather experienced with admissions websites, it took my friend and I both a minute to track down the link, which was buried in the third level of the site.
In an era when admissions offices are lamenting the increase stealth applications (or applications that come from students who have never inquired) in inhibiting their ability to project enrollment, why would you want to make it HARDER for a student to get on your mailing list?
On her blog Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra describes the "kick ass" curve. The basic premise is that users pursue activities because they eventually want to achieve "kick ass" status, but will only put up with sucking at something so much before they give up and move on to something else. I want to adapt this idea to what I see a lot in younger (and dare I say idealistic) admissions web professionals:
Admissions web people want to do the stuff that turns them on because that is what they define as "kicking ass". In their pursuit of the kick ass stuff, they often overlook the boring but necessary stuff which they view as mundane (only obtaining them "suck" status). As boring as this stuff may be though, the basic functionality is what speaks most directly to the business goals of your institution and cannot be overlooked. Skip over it at your own peril.
It's great to be passionate about what you do. But you can't let that passion blind you to the basics that keep the lights on. Key calls to action in any admissions office are getting your students to inquire, then later apply, and ultimately enroll. These are the steps that push them through the admissions funnel. I love blogs and video and social networks as much as the next person but they are not key calls to action. They are the things that should be done once all your base functionality is there. Otherwise, you've missed the entire point.
Key Takeaways:
1) Your audience has different desires at different stages in the admissions funnel
2) The basics may not be sexy but that doesn't mean you can ignore them entirely, as they are what some of your audience members are looking for
3) Don't do the cool stuff if you don't have the basics in place
P.S.: Just so you don't think I'm completely against social networks and community building, I'm scheming on a plan that will take the treadless approach and apply it to college fundraising. Totally kick ass :-) (but in the meantime, I've implemented tactics that keep the lights on for my audience)
4 comments:
Totally on the money. This is exactly why my school hasn't plunged headfirst into social media yet -- our website sucks. Sorry, I shouldn't say "sucks", I mean "blows."
And as much as I'd like to start playing with the fun stuff, it doesn't make much sense when I'm getting feedback that prospective students can't find program information or figure out how to register.
Of course the absurdly overpriced "trust us it can do everything for you" enterprise management software system isn't making life any easier for us, but that's another rant.
BTW, where do these figures come from that animate your posts? I'm digging them.
Hi Colin,
Thanks for the comment. The cartoons are a total pain in the ass but I think they look cool lol. Basically I make the people using www.meez.com and then mess around in illustrator and photoshop to create the rest.
K
I guess I should consider myself fortunate that our admissions/enrollment management folks haven't gotten sucked in to the social networking craze. I often think of it as a drawback, as I'd like to see more of our social media efforts front and center on our website (and there's a compelling case for doing so, in the proper context). But the more I think about it, and reflecting on your post, you're right: the basics must be there, and you can't get away with squat if they aren't.
What bugs me most about admissions-focused social media is their sanitized nature. Most student blogs don't make for compelling reading, because the admissions staff will see to it that the warts are hidden. For that reason alone, I'm thankful we don't try to do student blogs.
Hi Andrew,
I think social networking is great once you've already won a student over and they've either decided they're going to attend or have already sent in their deposit, which is what I tried to illustrate with my graph by showing a prospective student's desires change as they move through the admissions funnel. I think it could do wonders in getting rid of the summer sugar off (students who deposit but don't show up on arrival day for whatever reason) if you keep them engaged over the summer months.
I would disagree with you on the blog thing though - there are a lot of schools that make a great effort to get "real" blogs. When I first started running student blogs almost three years ago now, they were unedited, uncensored and had open comments. In fact, I made a point of pushing the students to give their real experience (they were worse editors than I ever would have been). You can read a partial list of the blog guidelines I use to hand out that was in TargetX's Email Minute. I think Cornell is another example - they don't edit their students at all as far as I know. Not only do prospective students really respond to this sort of thing, but so do alumni.
Post a Comment