1. Rock Your Schools Website: Lessons from 3,000 Independent Schools #BBK12UC 2. Peter Baron Senior Product Marketing Manager Blackbaud K-12 @peterdbaron Stacy Jagodowski Director of Strategic Marketing & Communications Cheshire Academy @stacyjago Meet Your Presenters #BBK12UC 3. What will we cover? 1. What is web usability? Plus a case study. 2. Research Report: Higher Education Navigation Trends 3. A peek into the findings (with extra attention paid to responsive web design) & recommendations from Cheshire Academy! 4. 125 124 slides in 60 minutes... Ready. Set. Go! 5. What do I mean by web usability? 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_usability Web usability is the ease of use of a website. Some broad goals of usability are the presentation of information and choices in a clear and concise way, a lack of ambiguity and the placement of important items in appropriate areas. 7. How can we ensure a good user experience? 8. Evaluating Navigation 9. Simplify organize Be creative Support SEO 10. The many looks of Cheshire Academys Navigation ... 11. Apply Learn Live Create Play Compete Support Connect Inform CA Today Brainstorm Nav Ideas! 12. Optimal Workshop Card Sort Exercise See how users sort info. 13. Optimal Workshop Card Sort Exercise 14. Optimal Workshop Tree Jacking Exercise Test #1 You are looking for the schools mission statement. 15. Optimal Workshop Tree Jacking Exercise find the Mission Statement traditional NavCall to Action Nav 16. Optimal Workshop Tree Jacking Exercise find the Mission Statement Call to Action Nav traditional Nav 17. The Final Product 18. But how can we assess how schools are approaching web usability & site navigation? 19. Stewart Foss eduStyle 20. The research report on higher-ed navigation trends, gives colleges and universities a brand new tool that can be used to evaluate their website navigation against industry standard practices. This report, used in combination with other tools, enables institutions to give their users the best possible experience online. 21. Free Report! Download your copy! https://hello.blackbaud.com/Private_School_Digital_Insight_2015.html 22. 2925 sites measured! 23. Common navigation terms phone numbers addresses # of menus on a pagevideos html & css versions locations on a page blogs What did we track? social profiles/badges # of URLs on a page 24. School Type, Religious Affiliation, Grade Level, State/Region, etc. 25. 1. Homepage Overview 2. Responsive Web Design 3. Navigation 4. Social Media 5. SEO 26. Homepage Design 27. Target Audience Promote Signature Programs Strategic Plan/Mission Aesthetics/Widgets 28. Wayback Machine Lets you view past Versions of your site 29. Cheshire Academy Homepage Design Find Inspiration 30. Our Design Process We worked closely with our designer to achieve the ideal homepage for our community of users Work closely with your designers. 31. Test, revise, re-test, revise. Repeat as needed. 32. Launched August 2014 33. Revised & Enhanced Spring 2015 34. Calls to Action on Every Page Branded login button Instead of just one full width photo, we did five photos for greater coverage of offerings Lets look at our choices for homepage design elements 35. NEW! 36. How do we compare to other independent school sites? X 37. 1940 1965 1985 2005 The major trends in computing Mark Weiser Mainframes (many:one) Personal Computers (one:one) Ubiquitous Computing (one:many) http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/NomadicInteractive/sld003.htm http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com/weiser/UbiHome.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing 1988 38. What are we seeing? 13% 1 1 % 7 6 % Source: AUG 2013 total page requests served from WhippleHill servers. 39. http://www.nd.edu 40. Of course, but how? 41. Too many choices ... 42. Responsive web design Phrase coined in 2010. Emerged in 2012. A cost-effective alternative to mobile apps. Utilizing HTML and CSS3. 43. Fluid Grid: graceful degrading of layout across devices and device orientation. Media Queries: a media query allows us to target not only certain device classes, but to actually inspect the physical characteristics of the device rendering our work. Responsive web design 44. Is your site responsive? 45. RWD takeaways! 46. Search 47. Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3035856/hit-the- ground-running/why-were-more-likely-to-remember- content-with-images-and-video-infogr Visuals 48. Visuals 49. Behind the Password 50. Responsive Strategy 51. Improve Mobile/Tablet Experience Take advantage of Mobile Options Find inspiration for RWD Kill the Academy App 52. Out with the old ... 53. in with the responsive Web Design 54. Navigation takeaways! 55. Add calls to action! 56. In a multi-screen world, how does my navigation display? 57. Calls to Action & Navigation 58. Remember our Navigation Fiasco? Apply Learn Live Create Play/Compete Support Connect 59. Apply Inquire Give Talk to us 60. But thats not all! 61. Social media takeaways! 62. Source: http://www.pewinternet. org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/ 63. Add social media badges! 64. Social Media Implementation 65. Add main accounts to Homepage Highlight social streams within the site Add to all internal pages Utilize Keywords 66. #Academylibrary Use #feeds to share department specific content from a master account. 67. Create a Mashup Page to house all your social media efforts 68. SEO takeaways! 69. 95% of schools use tags, but are they being customized? 70. 57% of schools use meta descriptions. 71. Meta descriptions are your sales pitch! 72. 81% of schools use the attribute 73. 81% of schools use the attribute 74. Search Engine Optimization 75. Keyword Choices Page Titles & Meta Optimize Content SEM Campaign 76. Create a master Keyword List that meets your marketing goals Google Adwords offers a Keyword planner tool Use spyfu.com to see what peers are doing 77. Content management systems like WhippleHill often have built-in in meta support. Use your Keyword list to drive how you fill this out. 78. Download your copy! https://hello.blackbaud.com/Private_School_Digital_Insight_2015.html 79. Peter Baron Senior Product Marketing Manager Blackbaud K-12 @peterdbaron Stacy Jagodowski Director of Strategic Marketing & Communications Cheshire Academy @stacyjago stacy.jago@cheshireacademy.org Meet Your Presenters