That headline may seem contradictory. Online engagement involves constituents interacting with our tools and technology, but that technology should not be our primary focus. Instead, we need to focus on the experience that we are trying to provide as we share our institution’s stories and drive prospective students to engage with us. We can engage them through storytelling. What does our site tell them about the institution and how do their interactions on our site build a compelling experience that makes them want to take the next step (inquire, apply, enroll, etc.) and further engage with your institution?  While there are a seemingly endless amount of tools and technology that comprise the interactive space, engaging audiences online is less about the tools and more about the experience.

When designing a user experience, make sure your approach is:

• Audience centered
• rooted in strategy
• enabled, not driven by, technology

When working to design or develop an online experience for your audience, do not lead with a tool solution. Instead, determine what you need to accomplish, why that’s important or valuable to the organization AND your audience. Then focus on bringing that process to life through the application of technology. In other words, what then how. Decision makers can be easily distracted by new tools or gadgets (something I refer to as the the shiny object syndrome); work to understand how the latest technology supports or enables your strategy.

At times, tools and technology, with their constraints and quirks, can be frustrating, but I don’t believe they are the reasons projects fail or sub-par experiences are delivered to our constituents. Projects rarely fail because of the technology, but often fail for more human reasons. Those human reasons may be internal turf battles or the lack of time, effort, or expertise to get at the root cause of an issue. These elements, in turn, are often translated into a sub-par set of requirements that the tools and technology will enable. A former boss of mine said, “There’s no need to automate a bad process; you’ll just mess up faster.”

Don’t be overwhelmed by the array of online tools out there; instead focus on designing and delivering experiences that engage your constituents in a manner that helps tell the story of your institution in a meaningful and engaging way.

Photo by roland

The post monitor and mouse era is upon us. By this I mean we are moving beyond the need or dependency of a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and desktop (or laptop) to define the user experience (UX). For the past few years we have seen hints of these changes with the rapid adoption of smart phones and the beginning of the mobile web. A key breakthrough in smart phones was the iPhone, which incorporates gesture technology (through its accelerometer) and hyper locality through its GPS and compass technology. The Fluid team at MIT has been looking at the impacts of “mouseless” ( and how the computer-human interface will continue to change for some time. We are seeing more of this technology move from the lab into mass production and application. This spring, with the launch of the iPad and GoogleTV, we’ve seen two other technology releases that continue to propel us into the post monitor & mouse era. The iPad and GoogleTV may not be disruptive in their own rights, in that they are not changing the game by themselves, but they represent the disruptive possibilities of a post monitor & mouse UX. The iPad has already sold over a million units since its launch in April and is now outselling Macs. GoogleTV is currently being integrated as a feature by some television manufactures. This means that these technologies are moving towards “early majority” adoption with enough momentum to cross the chasm and will not simply be relegated to innovation seekers and geeks on the adoption curve.

The iPad, which extends the technology and experience of the iPhone, further demonstrates that the web will not be experienced solely by laptops and desktops as most of us have known them. Instead, it begins to demonstrate the possibility of more participatory and immersive experiences. One is no longer simply reading or scrolling. Now one can easily adjust their views as content shifts based on the position or actions they take, and their physical location can now impact the context in which content is delivered.

Google TV demonstrates another change that is related in our move beyond monitor and mouse. Adding internet-enabled search to television may not sound like that big of deal in a world where we can stream television and movie content through services like Hulu and Netflix, or where we have internet-enabled Blu-ray players. However, I think it is a big deal because it further represents how channels continue to blur and are becoming less device specific. We are seeing the idea of “appointment television” fading away. Who knows, maybe Google Analytics will replace Nielsen ratings when it comes to measuring the impact of television content and help deliver more engaging and appropriate ads to the viewer. There’s a blur in experience as well. It wasn’t that long ago that most of us went online via the annoying audio cue of our modems bleating like a digital goat. Now, our phones and our TVs are integrating with the internet in such a way that we are always on, so to speak. We don’t need to be at our desks to find key information. We could be participating in a live event on campus and receive, or have access to, additional content that augments our experience.

While these may seem abstract at the moment, what does this mean for us marketing in higher education? It reinforces the need to stay focused on goals before tools. Determine what experiences are important for your constituents and how you would like constituents to experience your brand, then use technology to enable that experience in a manner that is contextually appropriate.

As more tools and technology are introduced, it becomes increasingly important to understand our goals and desired outcomes. What are we trying to accomplish? What experiences do we want people to have? It is dangerous to lead with the tool or technology solution. Technology should be an enabler of process or experience. It seems we were just beginning to understand how to design UX and develop content for the web within the constraints or bounds of a monitor and mouse. Now we have myriad devices and ways in which our constituents are going online. While it is easy to get distracted by all that is new, I believe it reinforces the need to stay focused on the what before the how.

Photo by lastquest

Visit Matt at Stamats Integrated Marketing: Technology Conference, October 20-22, 2010 in Las Vegas!

When engineering and modifying the visitor experience on your site, it is important to avoid the HiPPO. The HiPPO may seem innocuous, but can do quite a bit of damage. I’m not talking about hippopotamus amphibious (but left unattended on campus I’m certain one could do quite a bit of damage.) Instead, I’m referring to HiPPO as the acronym for the highest paid person’s opinion. This HiPPO can be like a bull in a china shop when it comes to web efforts and derail the best of projects. The best HiPPO repellent is data. Without data, it’s merely an opinion. When dealing in opinion, the one in power, usually the highest paid person, wins. Data is great; information is better. When it comes to the online experience, there are three types of research you can use to arm yourself for HiPPO:

1. Qualitative. This is usually in the form of focus groups, in-depth interviews, or ethnographic studies. With qualitative research you are looking for key themes. Themes can be organized via the three touchstones of intensity, novelty, and redundancy to help organize our qualitative findings: to what extent were there positive and negative ideas within a group or individual; were there new or novel ideas from the research participants; and to what extent was the information carried across groups or individuals?

2. Quantitative. This is usually in the form of surveys, polling, or analytics. While it is harder to gauge the level of emotional or symbolic currency an idea may have, quantitative data will help ensure a greater level of validity to your research findings. When it comes to the web, analytics is a great measure of what people are actually doing on your website. You may not know how they felt when they abandoned a task or completed a transaction, but now you have data to support what they are doing and not doing on your site.

3. Usability. Whether formal (using sophisticated software and video monitoring) or informal, usability is a key component in understanding what’s broken on your site. Unlike traditional quantitative or qualitative data, usability testing does not set out to prove anything, and you’re not using usability research in a manner that requires, nor promotes, statistical significance. Instead, it is there to uncover usability issues that need to be resolved to improve the site. From Jakob Nielsen’s research, we know that it does not take many participants to uncover the majority of your usability issues. For example, you can discover more than 85% of the usability errors on your site by testing less than eight participants.

These three types of research are not interchangeable. For example, just because you’ve done a focus group on a design does not mean you know if the site will work in a live environment. You need to do all three types of research on a regular basis if you plan to keep the HiPPOs at bay and deliver a meaningful experience that will prevent your site from being a commodity experience.

Photo by digitalART2

In a recent blog post Becky Morehouse wrote about the “Five Second Brand.” On the interactive front, we talk about the Five Second Test when it comes to a website or a particular page. Based upon the innovative and interesting work at Five Second Test, you can start to see how effective, or ineffective, your site may be in getting a visitor’s attention and driving them to action.

You can also apply your own five second test today on your own site. As a rule of thumb, you have five seconds or less for a visitor to be drawn into your page and/or take action. What one thing should someone take away from your site? Consider looking at important pages on your site—ones that should drive towards key goals. Now, look at that page for five seconds. Even better, ask a friend or family member who’s not affiliated with your institution to provide their feedback from a five second viewing of the page. Remember no more than five seconds. Now, what stood out? Was it clear what action you are encouraging the visitor to take? Was there a clear call to action?

Don’t confuse the five second test with the five second rule. As a father of two, I can no longer trust the five second rule.

Photo by Alice Lucchin

In Search Patterns: Design for Discovery (2010), Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender ask us to “look beyond our own borders” to discover ways to improve the products and services we deliver.  The authors encourage us to look to the periphery and then return focus to the tasks at hand. To that end, I believe that higher education sites could benefit from looking at the experiences and tools provided on the sites for other highly considered purchases, namely cars and real estate.

Your Web site does not exist in a vacuum, nor do your constituents’ online experiences. Their experiences on other sites, whether they are banking, news, entertainment, or social networking sites, continue to raise the bar for what visitors expect from your site. Those tools and features from other sites collectively increase the expectations of your visitors.

Selecting, applying, and paying for the right college is part of a highly considered purchase process for students and parents. Therefore it is important to provide visitors with the tools to help them make an informed decision. Ideally, those tools should be intuitive and easy to use. Pragmatically, people are most interested in costs, both in terms of time and money. How easy or hard is it for a visitor to understand the costs of attending your institution? Look at the decision-making tools available on real estate sites (including mortgage providers) and auto manufactures. Costs are not buried on these sites and parametric-style search features help find the right car or home for you, the costs, and the financing options.

While the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 will remedy some of the financial issues by November 2011, it will most likely create a commodity-style decision tool. By taking a complex, daunting, and somewhat overwhelming decision-making process, and providing tools to clarify and cut through the noise, institutions can help build trust with the potential students and provide fewer reasons for them to abandon their visit or lose interest in your institution entirely.

Not only are your Web visitors judging your institution relative to competitor institutions, but they are judging their online experience relative to other interactions and experiences they have online.  What things are you doing on your site to positively influence the user experience?

Photo by Jchetan

As we are early into the new decade, I hope the year and the decade find you doing well. The past decade saw tremendous growth, change, and innovation in the interactive space. From the predominance of brochureware sites in the early part of the decade, to the Web 2.0 changes in the mid ’00s, to today, on the cusp of Web², it’s an exciting, albeit sometimes frustrating time for interactive marketers. Financially, it was a rough decade bookended by the “dot bomb” economy and the Great Recession.  While the economic news was, and is not great, we’re seeing greater scrutiny on marketing budgets. The increased scrutiny and reduced budgets are forcing more accountability and creativity for marketers. As a result, we are seeing interactive initiatives becoming a greater part of the overall marketing mix, as institutions work to optimize their marketing expenditures and achieve measurable results. The optimization of marketing efforts should not be limited to ROI. In fact, I think optimization will be the critical focus for higher ed marketers throughout the decade. Efforts to optimize will need to improve your:

• marketing mix
• user experience
• recruitment funnel

Optimizing Your Marketing Mix

As Bob Sevier, our VP of strategy, says “Don’t fall in love with a channel, fall in love with results.” Measure the results you’re getting from each channel in the array of your recruitment channels. This is easier with channels designed to drive traffic to your Web site or microsite. Use measurement, data, and results to avoid being ruled by folklore (simply repeating efforts because it has always been done that way, rather than measuring results and assessing). Your marketing mix will need to optimize the array of channels, providing more choice for the prospective student to interact with your brand in a way they choose. Over the next decade, I expect to see more progress in the multichannel space—constituents will be able to engage in one channel and complete their transactions in another channel, without having to re-register or repeat who they are or what they are trying to accomplish.  The improvements in a multichannel approach should improve the user experience and provide more insight on how to engage prospective students throughout the recruitment funnel.

Optimizing The User Experience

User experience (UX) can be used broadly to describe the sum experience of interactions that a person has with your brand through online and offline channels. For the purpose of this blog post, UX is simply referring to the experience and interactions a prospective student has with your digital assets and artifacts—mostly e-mail, Web site, and social media presence. By leveraging analytics programs, you have the opportunity to turn data into insight and continually work to optimize the user experience. With the help of analytics, you will be able to see which digital assets are performing well, what changes and enhancements are working, and what are the best sources for driving traffic to your site. Optimizing the UX requires a dedication to continuous improvement, a commitment to testing, and the ability to make changes based on results. Anchored in Demming’s quality work, some form of plan, do, check, act (and repeat) should be employed in maintaining your interactive presence. In turn, this will help eradicate a “build and abandon” mentality that has plagued many Web sites over the years. Combining usability testing with Web analytics will help focus your UX optimization efforts. Optimization of your marketing mix and UX should dovetail into improvements in managing the recruitment funnel.

Optimizing the Recruitment Funnel

How are you reaching, engaging, connecting, and converting prospects? Which elements are working well and which need to be improved or abandoned completely? From the audience perspective, how does one become aware of your institution or program? How do their interactions and experience influence their opinion of your institution?  Will that opinion be strong enough to make them an advocate? Similar to your marketing mix, you need to understand which efforts are effectively moving prospective students through the funnel and which are not. A few years ago, I worked with a client that wanted to focus their funnel efforts on advocacy (primarily though community events and positive word of mouth). However, after analyzing their overall marketing mix, we realized they were spending 90% of their budget to drive awareness and name recognition. The problem: research showed that over 95% of their audience was already aware. In other words, they were spending most of their marketing budget and efforts on a part of the funnel where they were already succeeding, and continued spending could do very little to pick up that last 5%, which may have been statistical noise. The marketing mix needed to decrease spending and efforts on reach strategies and tactics, and move towards engagement, connection, and advocacy.

Optimizing the channels of your marketing mix, UX, and your recruitment funnel will require the time, tools, and institutional support to act.

As I continue to blog about interactive topics here at Stamats, I will explore more items related to optimization, most notably Web analytics and user experience. I’m interested in knowing what topics you would like explored on this blog. I’d like to hear from you regarding what’s working, or not working, when it comes to optimizing your marketing mix, UX, or the recruitment funnel.

Matt will be speaking at Stamats Integrated Marketing: Adult Student Marketing Conference in San Antonio later this month. For more conference information see www.stamats.com/simadultstudents.

Photo by Scott Ableman