What’s ahead for 2006?

This is the time of year for articles about the “best of 2005.” We’ve had some “best of” moments ourselves at mStoner. But here I want to look ahead. I’ve been asking myself what issues will be top of mind next year. So here’s my list of what I expect to be thinking about-and working on-in 2006.

1. Refining brand expression. Your website is your virtual campus, virtual store, and virtual office-in short, the most prominent expression of your brand. Does it hold up to constant scrutiny and use by the visitors you care most about? It better-because visitors take away an impression of your institution every time they visit your site. Do you welcome them and help them find what they want? Or do you send them down some dark alley where they can get lost easily, with no way to get back home? If visitors find your site too frustrating to use, they’ll go elsewhere.

2. Integration. When I first started talking about integrating the web and offline communications in 1996, it was an alien concept to just about everyone. Now, more and more institutions are seeing the wisdom of leveraging all their communications. My message for those that don’t—you should!

3. Metrics that matter. As we discussed several issues ago, 2006 could be the year that institutions actually pay attention to important measures of website effectiveness. In the industry, these are called “key performance indicators” or “kpis.” The challenge is to determine the essential measures for the success of your site and track them relentlessly, sharing the results with those who need them. Here are some ideas: What kind of activities are predictive of online donations? Involvement in the online alumni community? Season tickets to athletics? Involvement in on-the-ground admissions activities? Knowing this could help you to spark more donations.

4. Blogs. If follow our own blog, you know that we’re bullish on blogs/online diaries/online journals for student recruitment-in fact, we maintain a list of blogs used for this purpose. But there’s a lot more that blogs can do. I believe that 2006 will be the year that we’ll see several executive blogs-blogs by progressive campus CEOs who want to share their thoughts with constituents. Expect to see blogs used to organize group feedback around an event or a process: For instance, the University of Chicago’s Class of 1956 is using a blog to organize their 50th reunion. [Read (yet) more about blogs in my article in the January 2006 issue of CASE Currents.]

5. More, better content. Increasingly, people are recognizing that the quality of the content on their website needs to improve. And it does seem that website content is slowly, but surely getting better. That’s great news for visitors to your websites!