How to Turn Your Website into an Enrollment Engine

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0:00:11.7 Speaker 1: Hello. And welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Our guest today examine the ever evolving art, science and strategy that drive university websites… Edu websites serve many uses, but perhaps none are more important than their role as a recruitment engine. Our experts share ways to make your site more effective at helping students find, learn about, and hopefully apply to your school. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

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0:00:45.2 Sean Tiernan: Hello. And welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Sean Tiernan, and I serve as a senior director on EAB’s Digital Agency team, which is an arm of EAB that helps colleges and universities ensure that their website is effective at engaging prospective students, but really effective at engaging any of the multitude of audiences that we see… Edu is mandated with engaging and more importantly, inspiring action from today. That work is constantly evolving to keep pace with prospective students and their search preferences and the information that they’re seeking about colleges and universities on their terms, as well as website optimization being heavily influenced by the laws that govern digital advertising and data privacy regulations that we see surrounding.edu websites. There’s really a constant theme of evolving around prospective students or any audience as well as Google and their ever-changing search algorithms. Today we’re gonna look at the factors that are within your institution’s control, and we’re going to share some best practices and web design, user experience, and search engine optimization. Really the imperatives for making sure that you have highly engaging website and equally important and highly discoverable website. With me today to explore this topic is my friend and colleague, Mr. JP LaFors. Tell folks what you do here, sir. It’s exciting to have you on with me.

0:02:05.9 JP LaFors: Thanks, Sean. It’s great to be here with you. And hello, everybody out there. My name is JP LaFors. I’m a senior strategist on the digital agency team. And what I do at EAB is really look after our partners digital presence. And largely what that means is the website and making sure that it is healthy, especially from a prospective student basis. We’re wanting to make sure that the journeys that prospective students take through a website are not only productive for them, but also very productive for the institution in terms of getting a lot of great inspirational content, understanding what that brand experience is, but ultimately getting them to the things that we want them to do next, which is, inquiring or really understanding how to apply and taking that next step in the relationship that matters. And so, here at EAB, I get to play in all of the research and the detail to understand audiences and what they care about and behaviorally what they do, so when we think about the website as it is integrated into a really a larger ecosystem, how is that coming together? And it’s a fun playground. So yeah. Sean, it’s great to be here with you and love to get into the conversation.

0:03:32.1 ST: A fun playground is the perfect segue into my first question or area of expertise. I think what’s most exciting to me about this dialogue is, JP, it’s one that you and I have had in some capacity or another with, you know, between 350 to 400 schools over the past three to four years. And we get great perspective from A, the central marketing communications team that typically owns the website and their perspective of the.edu, but then equally important is the admissions, enrollment or advancement leaders that consider themselves the biggest internal customer of the website with a highly vested interest in the outcomes that is able to join. So we’ll bring some of that perspective from both audiences, but then I know you and I have both seen kind of the maturity model of how this landscape has evolved in the post pandemic world and the conversations we had in 2020 are in many ways very similar today, and in many ways very different today based on some of those moving goalposts that I mentioned in my introduction. I think as a baseline for the audience that doesn’t live and breathe in this topic, maybe as much as you and I do, can you kind of give us a baseline around how we should be thinking about .edus and maybe some stats around helping to quantify how important websites are today for prospective students in their search and identifying that right fit for themselves. What is the world we live in today of .edus, JP?

0:04:55.9 JL: Yeah. Thanks. First and foremost, I would just need to say that we’re going through a really dynamic time. I mean, not only for students today, really thinking about their college experience and what is gonna be that right fit place for them but we’re also going through a very transitional time in what tools are available for them to get those answers. And I think everybody’s well aware and astute in all the stats about Gen Z and their behavior digitally and how much they are really relying on the screens for information. But I think what’s really important is kind of this first fact, which is, when we survey prospective students, the website is the number one tool that they are using to help understand if this is a right fit place for them.

0:06:00.3 JL: It’s their most helpful resource in that college search. And I think the other stat that’s equally impressive is that, of those institutions that a prospective student is considering, 93% of the time, like, they’re going to go to that website. And so, 93% of all students visit the websites of the schools they’re considering. And so I think it’s just really important to understand that the stakes that are in play around what’s going on today. They’re going to come to that website and they are really going to understand if that information conveyed to them is really gonna be compelling or not. And so, I think the other aspect that, that’s maybe the third leg of the stool here is that we are really seeing a huge uptick in really the percentage of students that are really considered stealth shoppers.

0:07:03.6 JL: And what I mean by that is that they are flying under the radar of admissions departments and enrollment leaders because they’re really self-directing. And so, statistic wise in 2012, really stealth shoppers only represented around 20% of those total applicants out there. And really now we’re up into the 80%. And so when you think of the enormity of that population, who is really going to that Google search bar and trying to self-direct themselves for not only what institution should I be looking for, how I will consider that information that comes in but ultimately apply, it’s really interesting to say, okay, the content that then is put in front of them to now help navigate them through that decision making is pretty critical. And again, part of that larger ecosystem of, how are you developing a relationship and when, with prospective students so that it can be most productive for them and the institution.

0:08:11.6 ST: What are students looking for in their web experience? And I think especially when there’s a generational gap, there’s always the trying to understand the youth of our country in any capacity, but it’s also very simple when it comes down to some of the major tenets of an engaging and optimized website, an action-oriented website, as we often say. And you touched on them both there, JP, it’s Gen Z prospective students are stealth shoppers and self-navigators. And the solution or the path forward for engaging them is what I think of as, simple but not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it, but there isn’t a silver bullet secret sauce methodology, it’s really about doing the fundamentals really well. And then as, I’ll steal your words, JP, as you often say, taking an outside-in approach. We are all the star of our own movie or book.

0:09:04.8 ST: And so how can you find a way to tell your Towson University, where I went, how can they tell their story on Sean Tiernan’s terms? And that’s ultimately, we can get any customer and in this lens of prospective students, a very impressionable young mind to attach to your brand. That’s how we need to better close those gaps in terms of, where we’re going. And my next question, JP, is like, what are students looking for and parents as engaging elements or attributes of a website? And I’ll answer my own question first, is, it really starts with, does 15-year-old first time freshmen, Sean Tiernan, does 19-year-old transfer student, Sean Tiernan, does 23-year-old GI Bill Sean Tiernan and 35-year-old considering an MBA candidate, Sean Tiernan, do they all get to that same.edu homepage and find that self-navigation journey, not an entire website written for a 15-year-old, but then also does each of those journeys have content that inspires me to then want to give you my information? And I was very intentional to say inspires, because all too often we see students or customers in any realm being pushed or gated content or held hostage to get information that’s not the answer. Can you talk to me a little bit more about some of those engaging levers or ways schools can think about telling their story on their students terms or mindset are within their digital native language as we often think of?

0:10:32.4 JL: Yeah. I think that idea of speaking to them in that digital native language is super important. And I think the other piece is to really approach this from how, really they’re approaching it, like that outside-in perspective that you mentioned. And I think what we have really found behaviorally is that when students start to look and consider institutions, really where they start is their program of interest. And so think of them going back to that search engine and to that Google bar and really saying, who has the best degree for what I’m interested in, and starting to really explore there. And so to that question about really where it begins, it often starts there, and then ultimately like, okay, which schools in my area, which schools around the country are going to be best fit for me based upon what I’m interested in my needs.

0:11:42.5 JL: And so if it’s starting there, what we often see is the website not only being your front door, but also having many side doors. So if somebody is searching for a computer science degree and they’re interested in what those options are for them, they may come in that side door of that program page. And to your point, Sean, you want to make sure that the content that they see on that page that they arrive to, that landing page, is just as inspiring, has all of the right content that is going to get them excited, and interested, and feeling like they’re gonna have success and ultimately great outcomes just as much as the homepage of the website should do, of which they could then navigate to that. And so what we find is that the program, like, do you have the program that I’m interested in, is super important.

0:12:41.1 JL: I think the other thing that we see is, the journey that people take through the website doesn’t stop just at the program. It will also then go to really sort of brass tax items. Like, is this an institution that I can afford? That may be another question. And then lead you to those pages. Can I get in? What are those requirements? Do I feel like I am sort of a good fit academically? Am I prepared for this type of institution? Are there folks like me at, that I would see myself with there? Another question, what will it be like, what is student life? So, you get a sense of all of these aspects and making sure that the website is really positioned within the journey that they are taking, again, that outside-in approach to what they are interested in seeing. And so, I think that really what they’re looking for is exactly that. Majors and minors, academic information, affordability as well as financial information, admissions-based content, student life, those things that matter. And then ultimately, how do I start engaging to learn that in that deeper level?

0:14:00.7 ST: Absolutely. That was the easy one JP. The harder one is, what do students run into that deters them from websites? What are the cardinal sins of an underwhelming website that I think are more important today than ever before where the website is not a passive lead vehicle or enrollment source anymore, it is truly driving the bottom line for our partners across college universities. What are some of the opportunities for quick fixes or things that could quickly deter a student that could be addressed in quick fashion from our partners?

0:14:31.1 JL: Yeah. That’s a great question and I think, you have to understand that Gen Z has very little patience. They are going to get to your website and within seconds really determine whether the experience that they’re having on that site is something that they’re impressed with or they’re not impressed with. And if they’re not impressed, they are going to jump ship off that website faster than you want to. So this, again, back to that idea, the stakes are really high when you get that, when you get there and then making the most of that visit. What I often like to say is, it’s really important to think of somebody who has gone to that search bar, they have an interest in you, they’re coming to the website and there’s that opportunity to really get them to that point of intent, intent to have that deeper relationship with the brand, apply, et cetera. But, Sean, to your point around the cardinal sins is, when you know what happens a lot is prospective students will get to the website and there’ll be a lot of things that get in their way. A lot of friction within the website. And many of those could be very poor navigation strategies. Where they literally can’t find the information that they’re looking for.

0:15:55.6 JL: So, we kind of ask like, do you have the right navigation and information architecture that is really going to assist somebody? And that’s sort of a cardinal sin. If it’s not easy and quick they’re gonna jump. The second piece is, do you have content to your point that is inspiring, are you speaking their language? Are you providing these students with authentic content, not just information, but things from their side and their perspective, like, social proof of testimonials or content that is really coming from, not sort of the institution on high, but really where it’s being delivered in a way that those students can see that that actually is the experience I’m gonna have. These are the internships that I could get, these are the clubs that I could actually be a part of. And so, often what I like to say is, it’s not just about the information that you have on the site, it’s really about making sure to understand why you should attend that institution and the reasons for being able to see you as different.

0:17:15.1 JL: And so, those cardinal sins are very tactical in nature or they can also be kind of high level content. On the technical side, really cardinal sins about not having good SEO hygiene, where you’re able to really almost come to these pages and have, what I’ll call on page strategies, that just find you lacking visibility in the search engines. That’s a cardinal sin. And then another one that I would just finally say, Sean, is that, when somebody comes to the site and there just isn’t a good progression of content that leads you to the next step, where you just leave them kind of left for what happens next or what you want them to do next, is definitely a cardinal sin for sure.

0:18:11.1 ST: Yeah. You mentioned two monumental ones that are just prevailing themes that I see in most of my conversations. You mentioned social proof and intuition. Those two are crucial. Everyone says we wanna share, our why us or we’re different because, and that’s branding 101, differentiate yourself. But if I hear one more school say that, we’re affordable or our faith makes us different or our football team is gonna win on Saturday, there’s a whole conference of you. It’s really how do you show that differentiated? Show me, don’t tell me type generation here. How do we make sure that we’re having a website that visually articulates, not just text or talks at students is really monumental. And making sure it’s intuitive. We talk about, everyone wants to talk about navigation, user experience. What is strong navigation? It’s basically easy to fall into where you want me to go or answer my questions without going down a deep dive search. And we talk about the short attention span of the younger generation coming. Sure. And we can make some lighthearted jokes, but the reality is, they’ve grown up in the information age, so if you can’t tell your story, they will find a third-party site that can tell your story or even worse, they might go read somebody else’s story that is doing a better job of engaging them on their terms.

0:19:28.0 ST: I met with a school this morning and we were looking at their cinematography program page. There was no visuals on it. I’m thinking, this is the type of student who wants to be a director or engage in the film capacity. They want to tell a visual story and work in that business. We’re not walking the walk here. And so, we’re probably not doing a great job sharing how wonderful the curriculum is on their terms. So I really appreciate those two points. And, JP, you also did a great job of emphasizing the importance of program pages. If we’re thinking in a consumer mindset that is, the product of higher education. And whenever you’re gonna think through a transactional experience of any kind, you need to think about return on an investment. And so, as we think about program pages, give us a little color in terms of, how do you demonstrate return on investment, and how can our partners really close that gap from students who are skeptical of, “I signed on for all the debt because my brother and sister did. My parents did. I thought that was status quo.” I know that is not the landscape we’re operating in now. I suspect our partners are feeling that pressure day in and day out, and the website is a massive opportunity to confront and proactively address that return on investments. I’m curious specifically to how schools are doing that on program pages, and some interesting and tactical ways you’ve seen that stigma diminished or addressed proactively by our partners.

0:20:49.8 JL: Yeah. Program pages are absolutely key and important to really make sure that you’re not only going to have a compelling argument, if you will, but really where it inspires and addresses some of the things that we know that prospective students are really coming to those experiences kind of within their two ears, if you will. I think what is really important to understand is, students today are absolutely anxious about their future, they’re feeling the pressure of, are they ready for college? Can they succeed? Do they have the academic acumen? Many of them obviously still on this edge of the pandemic and we find that they’re really nervous or concerned about a number of things. They’re concerned about the cost, they’re concerned about getting a job, they’re concerned about the ability to kind of be happy within the program. And so, when you think about all of what goes into the mix of somebody’s thought process when they arrive to a program page, Sean, it really then is something that is pretty critical to get right. And I would say that from a program page standpoint, there’s really four key things that I’m gonna make sure you sort of understand and then we can talk about some of the content on it. The first is, you have to make sure that those program pages are findable. Can you get them there? And do those program pages have the SEO value on them, the keywords to make sure that they can even be found in the first place? That’s number one.

0:22:51.9 JL: Number two is when they get to that page, is it easily digestible, scannable? What I call snackable. Can they quickly understand what’s there and then dive into the things that matter to them most, or what they’re most curious about in a way that doesn’t take them through massive amounts of content? Because frankly, the patience level is pretty low. And so being able to navigate that page is number two important. The third is back to that idea of, is the content relatable? Does it have authentic content on it? Again, can they see themselves in it? Do they see students on the page and not just stock photography. Do they see really those clubs and internships and experiential learning that they’re really looking for? Do they see that quickly? And the fourth thing is, are you asking them within like a form to take that next step, to be a lead. So, I think those are the four important things. And from a content standpoint, really making sure that we are really giving some good thought to what makes that program different, but also what makes that program specifically unique for them and what they’re after with their experience. So I would give it that, Sean, but certainly happy for follow up question.

0:24:26.4 ST: Whoa, JP, you’re telling me the girl reading the book, Under the Tree, isn’t gonna cut it for visuals anymore. Wow. Times they are changing. No, what I love about that. And I think most marketing people in some sense or another, we consider ourselves storytellers. And like part of what I love about the work that we do in my career individually, is I think of my story all the time, and you’ve heard it ad nauseam but, a wide-eyed bushy-tailed high school senior graduating headed to Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. I remember looking at their advertising page, which is what I studied, and it didn’t take much to win me over. Because I’ll be honest, Sean Tiernan 17 years old wasn’t asking many critical questions and didn’t have many cares in the world. And now I look at that page very differently at what myself or a kid today, in that same trajectory, how they would look at those pages. And I think back to, I wanted to work in advertising, because I loved Super Bowl commercials every year, and I fell in love with that show, Mad Men, and I didn’t really ask many questions around, what are the jobs of all those people in that TV show? Or how do you climb up to becoming Don Draper, and all these, what is the job prospects in the advertising industry outside of Madison Avenue? Those aren’t questions that really crossed my mind. I was just excited to be a sponge and learn.

0:25:47.3 ST: And now as I think through going to my alma mater’s pages they do a great job of making sure they have job outcome data there. So I know that… I’m aware of the price, but I’m also aware of the financial aid available to me. I’m also aware of the great relationships that they have in their community to get me an internship for that, what we talked about a moment ago, experiential learning. They also had great visuals to show me social proof of my peers learning not a professor or faculty talking down to me with a 20 year age gap that I might be skeptical if they really understand what I’m looking for. So, this is a very different way of not just communicating your differentiated value, but a show me don’t tell me approach. It’s a little flip, but I share this with partners all the time. We need to remember that millennials were the kids that didn’t go outside and played too many video games. Gen Z is the generation that watches other kids open Christmas gifts on YouTube before they open their own. They are consuming the media of just experience of life day to day. And so, the more you can have that type of engaging media and show students who you are in an authentic capacity, there’s significant opportunity.

0:26:54.6 ST: And so many schools are talking at students. We talk about, at EAB, often diversity, equity, and inclusion. Is that a page that’s hidden in the corner of your website, or is that something that’s prevalent throughout every page of your website? A really great example, I saw last month, a school in Dallas that had a chemistry program page that had a female student of color using a world-class microscope technology that’s above my pay grade of understanding. And then they hit me with all these outcomes data of their job market. So, they didn’t have to preach to me that they have a number of females in STEM courses or serve students of color in an overwhelmingly positive capacity and equal capacity. They didn’t have to tell me that I’ll have hands-on learning experience and wouldn’t be in an auditorium with a 200:1 faculty student ratio. They showed me all that. It was very clear because they were walking the walk on an authentic brand expression. And so, that’s an opportunity where we hear so many schools say, “Hey, I wanna remove the wall of text on my program page.” Okay. But you still need to convey all of those points. So how are we gonna do that on that outside-in approach, as you said, and I love it even more, JP, in a more digestible or snackable capacity. Because these kids are scrolling fast and they’re clicking faster, and we really need to meet them where they are.

0:28:17.4 ST: We talked a lot about user experience and Gen Z and what their preferences and what they’re looking for here. I think we’ve touched on it a little bit, but it’s equally important to think through the evolving landscape or the often frustrating moving goalposts of Google search algorithms and search engine optimization as we commonly refer to as SEO and even the third rail to come that people are just scratching the surface of AI. Talk to me a little bit about how colleges and universities should be thinking about the world of SEO moving forward, and then as one of our best partners had said, how do they make sure they don’t have the best website that no one knows about? If you put all that work into user experience, you wanna make sure it’s highly discoverable. What are some of the best practices there that our partners should be considering as they think about their footprint in Google search landscape?

0:29:03.4 JL: Yeah. It’s such a good point and important one. And you’re right, we’ve had partners that have pretty good websites, but literally out of their mouth is, we’ve got a great website that nobody can find. And SEO it has been a moving goalpost for a number of years, but when Google decided to really update the algorithm this past November, it really changed the game on how are you prepared as an institution to not only, number one, understand where you are as a baseline for just pure visibility of your website and some of the key pages that we know prospective students care about, those enrollment critical pages, like, number one, do you even know and benchmark and keep track of this, because as the goalposts move and the algorithms change, especially this last November and another update from Google early in the spring, it is absolutely changing and changing quickly.

0:30:08.9 JL: I think the reality and just where it’s important for everybody to hear and know is that, Google is changing how it makes sure to really evaluate a website, a.edu, and how many keywords that… And the quality of those keywords that are really going to rank. And so what we’re finding is that, a site may be down in the overall number of keywords, but the quality of the keywords really matters. And so it’s almost getting more and more important that you don’t leave this to chance, but you’re really being thoughtful about what are those searches you want to make sure that you are strong for. What is differential about a program that you have? What’s differential about the institution, so that you can make sure that your content, and I would say that’s both like technical aspects of the site, but also content aspects, that that is the stuff as the crawlers go through that, it is really being surfaced. And so what we’re seeing is that, that is just a really critical component.

0:31:21.5 JL: In relation also to this idea of what you mentioned, the zero click environment, Google is absolutely wanting to make sure to answer prospective students questions as quickly as they can. So, structured data, featured snippets, all of those things that Google pulls into that search engine results page is critical that your content is coming from the site so that it’s you and not others who are helping answer that question before they even get to your site. So, really critical piece and Sean, you hit it, the moving goalposts, it’s absolutely moving and it’s moving fast. AI is jumping that up. Content isn’t just on your website, content is everywhere, and you really need to make sure that you are managing that content in a very strong way.

0:32:14.5 ST: Yeah. When I think about how to kind of synthesize everything we’ve talked about thus far, or if I had to give my elevator pitch for partners on, what’s going on around your website and what to think about, really the trend line is that, your audience’s expectations are continuously rising because of the resources and information available to them in the digital age that we’re in. And then Google is perpetually evolving and changing and demanding more to be highly discoverable and indexing. And so, your website has a higher mandate, a higher bar to chin. And so driving action from your audience moving forward, if I had to really simplify it, you need to tell your, why us, you need to do so in a highly discoverable capacity in Google with strong SEO hygiene as you mentioned. And you need to do so in a capacity that is on Gen Z’s terms.

0:33:06.1 ST: So, really thinking through how do you tell your blogs or your copywriting or your visual storytelling in a way that will index in a way that attracts your audience in, and then ultimately engage them in a way that will mature them to be inspired to take action. So again, simple but definitely not easy, and that’s really where our expertise comes to the forefront. JP, as we’re kind of thinking through wrapping up here, I feel bad, we might have painted a bit of a daunting landscape in the world that surrounds.edu websites. Why don’t we talk a little bit about how we are helping our partners kind of reverse engineer new content strategy that is built on data from Google’s landscape and their performance there as well as what we’re constantly researching is Gen Z and millennial communication preferences, and ultimately, how we can use data to guide their future content to better engage in that landscape. We’d love to give our partners a bit of a teaser if nothing else, in terms of how we support our partners on landscape.

0:34:08.5 JL: Yeah. I think one of the important things that we do is, we really wanna make sure that really the website really meets the moment of that prospective student as they’re really thinking about it. So thinking about it from that outside-in perspective and really coming at it through three important components. The first is, making sure that you really are driving as much organic traffic and qualified traffic to the site as possible. That’s what we were talking about with SEO and keywords and managing that in a very disciplined way. The second piece is, really engaging and making sure that when we think about it and we work with our content strategist specialists is, how are we really thinking about that on-page strategy? Really think about it almost as like a blueprint for a page and really understanding how that blueprint can really get somebody to that next step and have them inspired.

0:35:12.5 JL: So, we’re working with partners to really make sure that it’s really the right information at the right time in the right place, because that absolutely matters for getting them to the next step. And that’s that last piece is, that third piece is, really getting them to convert. We talked about stealth shoppers, we talked about making sure that we really need to get them to raise their hand after being interested. So, making sure that the forms are in the right place, that it can actually plug into a nurturing and speed to lead absolutely matters and really getting, ultimately, content and people to that next step of enrollment. Those are really where we’re helping partners day in and day out to make sure that it’s productive.

0:36:00.1 ST: And the only… The little upside to end on is that, it doesn’t take the whole website.

0:36:06.5 JL: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

0:36:08.0 ST: 20% of a school’s webpage probably carry the weight for about 80% of its enrollment contribution. So, targeted focused, audience-centric focus, SEO optimized focus, measurable impact can happen and that’s how we live and breathe. So, JP, this was fun. You and I can talk about this for hours. We could do a fireside chat, I think. But really appreciate. I’m a big idea visionary, and you always bring great tactical stats and really tactical moments of impact that we can do and executing. So, I appreciate the color commentary you provided today. And thank you all for listening in. That is it for Office Hours With EAB, and we hope to talk to you a little bit more about websites. If there’s interest in the future, check out our website and go a little further. And we’re happy to do an assessment of yours.