More people will visit your website than look at your view books and brochures*.
Based on higher education industry data it is clear that the Web is becoming the center of gravity on most campuses. Other media like advertising, direct mail, publications and special events will not go away but the role they play will evolve to drive traffic to the web-based communication strategy.A well designed website powered by flexible and robust technology can help your institution achieve many of its marketing goals that include:
Enhance student recruitment and retention
Broaden public relations efforts
Facilitate communications with all campus constituents (students, faculty, staff and community)
Enhance community outreach programs
Maintain connections with alumni
The ability to effectively service multiple target audiences requires database driven technology accompanied with integrated tools. In addition to standard content management tools to manage templates, files and content editing and workflow, a higher education website will have special content management needs that include:
Administrative tools that integrate with the entire system across all the web sites, user administration, reporting requirements and traffic reports
Multilingual content management and global content sharing across web sites
Marketing communication tools for newsletters, e-mail broadcasts, e-mail list management, forms and surveys
Faculty reporting tool to enable faculty members to easily enter their annual reports online and automate publication to the web in a consistent and branded format
Interactive web communities to allow prospects, students, faculty and other site constituents to interact with your institution and with each other
E-commerce tools for ordering transcripts online, product catalogs, event registrations or other secure online transactions
Course catalog to allow visitors to easily find courses based on key word searches
Event registrations and notifications
Interactive Calendaring
xCatalyst for Education, An Overview
* The Web Site Effectiveness Study, Lipman Hearne