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December 3, 2007

The Results Are In

I must admit, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when only 5% of responses to last week’s survey indicated their web site received little funding, because the web does not play a large role in reaching enrollment goals. So why aren’t admission web sites properly funded? Here’s what you said:

We are already hitting our enrollment goals	20%
We don’t have control of the admissions web site	25%
For us, the Web does not play a large in reaching our enrollment goals	5%
We cannot spend more money or change what we are already doing	30%
We want to make it better, but don’t know where to start	30%
We cannot prove the Web brings value to our recruitment efforts	15%
Other	30%

*More than one answer per respondent was possible.

 

In mulling over the survey results, I kept going to back to one word – something we all love – data.

 

First, I hope each of you has taken the opportunity to download our E-Expectations white papers. These white papers contain data we collect from high school juniors on their e-communication preferences from college and university admission offices. This data will help you make the case for more investment into your web site and other e-recruitment initiatives.

 

Second, make sure you are receiving monthly web statistics reports from your web services or information technology folks. This data will not only tell you how many visitors there are to the admissions web site, but it will also tell you what pages are most frequently visited, what search terms are typed in, and what files are being downloaded. More detailed (and expensive) web analytics packages can provide web behavior down to the individual user. If you need help asking for this information, please let me know.

 

While technology can be challenging, it has been a godsend to those of us in marketing. We now have data to help guide decisions and make arguments for change.

Cathy Willette,
Vice President of Higher Education, James Tower