At mStoner, we know from our client work and research with prospective teens that academic program pages are the most-visited pages on higher education websites.
After deciding to go to college, the next questions on prospective students’ minds are usually, “What program do I want to pursue?” and then, “Does this institution have that program?” And, though some students may start college undecided, their earnest exploration of what’s available and what might be a good fit can start as early as freshman or sophomore year in high school.
As Michael Stoner noted in his recent Inside Higher Ed post, What Teens Look for on Academic Websites:
For example, as part of Mythbusting Websites research recently conducted by mStoner Inc. and Chegg, teens indicated just how important academic-related content is to them. They said that finding information about majors/academic programs was the No. 1 reason for them to visit a college website (93 percent).
When we asked respondents to select from a list of common website navigation links that they might use at different stages of their college search and choice, majors/minors (92 percent) and academics (90 percent) were the first two choices when they were researching colleges. These links continued to be important as students decide where to apply and which institution to attend among those that accepted them.
Many visitors to program pages find them via search engines, but others will use your website’s information architecture (IA) to browse what you have on offer. Good content will assure that those who search for a particular program name will find what they need, but many visitors won’t know what they want or what you have.
The best way to help visitors on their journeys of exploration around your academic offerings is to build an academic program finder.
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Benefits of a Program Finder
There are seven main benefits to having a program finder on your website:
- Bypasses, or ideally replaces, internally focused, top-down school > department > program hierarchies that reflect your organizational structure but do little to help visitors find what they need.
- Quickly builds visitor awareness of your academic portfolio, providing a more substantive argument for your academic breadth than simply saying, “We have a wide variety of programs.”
- Allows visitors to find programs based on criteria that are most important to them in a much more interactive way than scrolling through a long list of links.
- Gives visitors a space to scan and build a mental understanding of the key features of your programs without becoming overwhelmed by the details for any one program.
- Forces you to organize your many programs into a logical, categorized structure.
- Helps clarify connections between related programs.
- Gives you a scalable framework for program information and metadata that can adjust over time as your academic offerings do the same.
Components of a Program Finder
You’ll need to include the following components in your program finder:
- Complete list of programs. This is easier than it sounds — exceptions to the rules always exist. For example, interdisciplinary programs and certificates are two that can be tricky to categorize cleanly. The good news is that with a program finder, you are forced to take a hard look at how you label and categorize your programs, and when programs don’t cleanly fit, you can tag a program with more than one category.
- Categories. Determine how you will allow visitors to filter. Some common search filters include:
- Degree level — associate, bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, certificate
- Degree type — B.S., B.A., M.S., M.B.A., Ph.D
- Learning format — online, physical classroom, hybrid
- Desired career — This is typically built in conjunction with career services and is a great way to communicate potential outcomes.
- Location — If your institution has more than one campus, a program finder can help visitors pare down to just what’s available nearby.
- Department / College — These are typically for internal use, because prospective students don’t usually know where specific programs live in your organizational structure.
- Tags place each program within its respective categories. The best way to do this is to build out a data diagram (or if you have the background, a relational database model) that lists information in two ways — by program, with all related tags, and by tag, with all related programs.
- Program finder landing page. Once you’ve figured out the information that will live behind the scenes, it’s time to build a dedicated page to house your program finder interface. Some great examples:
- Columbia College Chicago has a very visual, interactive program finder that allows filtering on careers and interests.
- Loyola Marymount has a clean, modern approach.
- Webster University has more than 100 campuses. Its program finder emphasizes method of learning (online and hybrid in particular) and location.
- Program previews. Rather than simply provide a link to each program page, the finder also should include a brief preview of the most important information about the program. Wilfred Laurier’s program finder does this nicely by providing additional information (degree, location, college) when a visitor hovers over a particular result.
Extending Your Capabilities
The program finder page itself is a terrific tool, but its benefits don’t have to end there. Consider:
- Placing the program finder as the first link in your architecture and naming it with an action phrase, such as “Find Your Program” or “Explore Our Programs.”
- Listing related programs (by department, school, or career) as part of each academic program landing page.
- Linking to the program finder from every school, department, and program page, as a clear and compelling call-to-action button.
- Previewing and promoting the program finder on your main academic and admission landing pages, to build awareness about it and increase the likelihood that visitors will use it.
Whether you already have a program finder or your academic programs are simply listed in alphabetical order in a long page of links, it’s worth taking a close look at how you present your program information online. If you can’t make sense of it or find specific items easily, imagine how tough it must be for prospective students discovering you for the first time.