Mar 18, 2015
The latest Ruffalo Noel Levitz E‑Expectations report shows us that academic program pages (pages that represent individual degrees, majors, and minors) are some of the most important destinations on college and university websites. These pages represent the product offered by institutions of higher education – a place for prospective students to go to find answers about individual degrees. How can you make sure that people can find and get to specific academic program pages quickly? Here are some recommendations.
[Tweet “Six recommendations for driving more prospective students to your program pages. #mStoner”]
1) Make “Programs” (or “Degrees” or “Majors and Minors”) a persistent link. On our latest web launch for Capital University, we provide a persistent “Programs” link in the left-hand navigation. This makes a list of all degrees reachable from any page in the site, and it means that a visitor can easily get to individual degree pages in only two clicks.
2) Make sure you have a great academic program listing page. What happens when a visitor clicks the link that says “Degrees,” or “Majors and Minors?” The listing page that shows your collection of degrees needs to be comprehensive, but easy to scan. Here are some listing pages that do a good job of presenting a great depth and breadth of programs with easily scannable groups of information:
Degrees and Programs offered by the University of Nevada, Reno
Programs of Study offered by the University of Chicago
Academics at Parsons The New School for Design
3) Optimize individual program pages for search engines – based on high-volume, low-competition search terms connected to the degree. You can use Google AdWords to test how much traffic certain terms receive and Google Analytics to find out what search terms are generating traffic to individual pages.
4) For searches within your site, consider implementing custom autocompletion within the search field. The Bucknell University site provides a good example of this technique. If you start to type an academic area of interest in the search field, such as “Biology” or “Accounting,” the field expands, showing available majors related to your search term. Degree choices are shown first, in order to promote the academic offering itself over administrative offices.
5) Provide links to related degrees or other academic programs on an individual degree page. Let’s say you offer a variety of degrees in the field of allied health. A student interested in one degree might be interested in others – she may still be deciding which program is best for her. A set of links with related degrees offers a way for her to keep investigating your institution as a possibility.
6) Use consistent vocabulary for academic programs across the site. You’ll notice in this post I use the word programs to mean degrees, majors, minors, and certificates. All of these are common terms on higher education websites. It’s important to be intentional and consistent about how you talk about programs within your own site – for example, calling an offering a “major” in one place and an “undergraduate degree” elsewhere may be confusing to some prospectives.
Have you seen or used other techniques for getting prospectives to program pages quickly? Post them in the comments below.