Common Pitfalls of Higher Education Websites

Improving yield starts at first contact

Basically, if accessibility hasn’t been your institution’s priority, it needs to be.

While the low-contrast view may be barely legible to you, for many it is not.

The common mistake is confusing a design that looks appealing with one that is accessible.

The common mistake is assuming all users interpret context the same way.

While accessibility may not in and of itself be a motivating factor to a prospect entering your sales funnel or following your prospect journey, improving accessibility lowers the barrier to entry for a substantially large group of applicants already motivated to take the next step. Moreover, considering yield rates are multifactorial, rates for that cohort is likely to be higher for accepted students who feel your institution takes their disability seriously.

Establishing a deliberate visual hierarchy with obvious CTAs are critical to directing prospects into the sales funnel. This can take numerous forms (i.e., white space, information hierarchy, scanning patterns) and should be considered at every level of page depth. Simply put, prospects will struggle to follow a confusing prospect journey, so every element should have purpose.

The common mistake is being overly verbose. Superfluous copy that adds little new information distracts attention from your brand story and obstructs prospects from their intended path.

Furthermore, consider the highly non-scientific “squint test” to decipher the intended priority on the following examples:

The common mistake is not visually guiding users into your prospect journey. When everything is prioritized, nothing is.

The reduction or removal of image content will fundamentally alter the narrative, and not necessarily for the better. Images are a unique type of content in that they have inherent height and width values. As the display device size reduces, images will proportionally scale down to fit in the available space. Consider the following comparison:

In this case, the ostensible purpose of the hero is to leverage high-quality imagery of the campus to build an emotional trust factor with prospects. The photograph is arguably the indispensable element of this appeal. However, when scaled down, without consideration for device context, the image is practically non-existent, defeating the purpose of the appeal.

Additionally, the effect of the order of page elements on smaller devices is often ill considered. The following is a typical example of some content markup:

That markup might translate into a display such as this:

While the default stacking of page elements for mobile breakpoints is not wrong per se, the common mistake is assuming the default order is considerate of your priorities.

Reversing the flow of elements is not necessarily the silver bullet here either. The only legitimate solution is careful consideration of your marketing objectives for each persona within multiple device contexts.

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