CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL€¦ · part of your school’s entire story, and...
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com MORE > CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL Kelley Jarrett, Manager of Guide Creative, Blackbaud’s In-House Full-Service Digital Agency Why is your school’s online brand important? Your brand is your school’s story. It’s your voice, your tone, and your unspoken message to the world. It’s how you share your mission, goals, and impact through imagery, colors, styles, interaction, and words across all channels of communication. The importance of understanding your school’s brand story and communicating it to the world — prospective families, current families, staff, and alumni alike — is critical. We asked 200 schools about their website user experience and compiled the information so that you can see how you stack up. We’ve also researched best practices for your school’s website, and included tips and tricks to improve your online message and brand story so that you can better communicate, engage, and inspire your audience online. It is standard in the industry to redesign a website at least every three to four years. But, your website should be an evolution — make sure you’re continually reviewing, testing, and refreshing your website while using new tools that engage your audience.
Transcript of CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL€¦ · part of your school’s entire story, and...
CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL Kelley Jarrett, Manager of Guide Creative,
Blackbaud’s In-House Full-Service Digital Agency
Why is your school’s online brand important?
Your brand is your school’s story. It’s your voice, your tone, and your unspoken message to the world. It’s how you share your mission, goals, and impact through imagery, colors, styles, interaction, and words across all channels of communication.
The importance of understanding your school’s brand story and communicating it to the world — prospective families, current families, staff, and alumni alike — is critical.
We asked 200 schools about their website user experience and compiled the information so that you can see how you stack up. We’ve also researched best practices for your school’s website, and included tips and tricks to improve your online message and brand story so that you can better communicate, engage, and inspire your audience online.
It is standard in the industry to redesign a website at least every three to four years. But, your website should be an evolution — make sure you’re continually reviewing, testing, and refreshing your website while using new tools that engage your audience.
CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
Tips To Improve Your Website1. Focus on Your Audience Needs
It’s important to understand your audience and design your website according to THEIR needs. After all, they are the ones who will be using your site; they need to feel connected and engaged.
To ensure your site is audience focused you should ask, test, and respond:
• Whoareyouraudiencegroupsandhowdotheyrankinprioriy?
• Whatdotheycareabout?Whataretheirgoalsandaspirations?
• Howdotheyinteractwithyouonandoffyourwebsite?
• Howlongdoesittakethemtoperformkeytasks?
2. Make Sure Your Home Page Is Focused Prioritizing content on your home page is critical to engagement. If there are too many messages or if your site has conflicting content, your audience will feel overwhelmed and may be scared away. Using wireframes to organize and prioritize messaging on your home page helps you kill the noise and engage users.
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“Your website does not exist as a boutique just to show off information about your school. Instead, it’s actually a tool to mobilize your audience.”
— Raheel Gauba, Creative Director,
Blackbaud, Inc.
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
Does your school’s home page pass the “three- secondtest”?Tofindout,ask20userstopull up your home page and scan it for three seconds. Then, ask them to tell what your school stands for. This easy exercise can show if your message is focused enough for clarity.
3. Share Your School’s Mission Most prospects check out your website before they inquire, apply, or give. Are you clearly articulating yourschool’smissiononline?
In addition to making your school’s mission easy to find on your site, reinforce it by using strong images, info-graphics, photography, and design that match your school’s voice, tone, and brand. Tell your story not just in words, but in all visual elements on your website as well.
4. Use Compelling Imagery The images you choose to represent your brand on your website should be designed to engage. Images draw the eye first, so they should be compelling.
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
For more compelling images, consider:
1. Eye Contact: Eye contact connects people more than any other visual element. If you choose to include photography, make sure the eyes are on the audience, ensuring a personal connection.
2. Real Stories: Photography that shows real people impacted by your school (instead of stock photos) will add to your creditability and showcase stewardship. How did yourschoolimpacttheirfuture?Tellhisorherstory,andshow their face.
5. Ensure Ease in Navigation User-centric (instead of designer-centric) web design has become a standard approach for strategic websites. Menus should be intuitive and provide multiple interaction paths for users.
Check your analytics to understand the top three tasks your users perform on your site. Thentest;doesittaketwoclicksorlesstoaccomplishthesetasks?Ifnot,you’relikelycreating frustration with your users.
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
6. Include Clear, Bold Calls to Action Assuming you have compelling images, engaging photography, and persuasive content, it’s almost worthless without a strong call to action. A call to action can be as simple as an “apply” or “donate” button, but can scale in complexity to embedded forms, social media sharing, and beyond.
When creating calls to action, make sure they stand out so that the user doesn’t have to look hard to find them. Use clear, directive words like “Apply” instead of “Click here,” and make absolutely sure that when a user clicks a call to action, it takes them immediately to that action.
7. Showcase Stewardship For schools, it’s important to show where dollars are spent. But it’s just as important to show the other areas of impact your work has on your families.
Show student/teacher ratios through a visual info-graphic. Clearly state funding priorities. Include architectural plan images for your new building to invest the user in the capital campaign. These examples will share all of the wonderful work you’re doing while encouraging support and involvement.
8. Keep Content Fresh You want your users coming back to your site time and time again so that you have a consistent medium for marketing, communication, and involvement. To encourage repeat visits and engagement, it’s important to always have something new to offer your audience.
Utilize news feeds, live social media feeds, events, and user-generated content (like blogs) to provide relevant, timely information that can change easily and often.
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
9. Be Social Social media is on the rise. Linking to your Facebook® page on your website is no longer enough to provide an engaging social experience for your users. It’s important to consider social media as part of your school’s entire story, and to integrate it throughout all aspects of your online efforts.
Consider feeding social media activity directly to your home page so that users can experience the entire online story in one place. Allow users to share an action they have made on your website—didtheyinquire?Apply?Donate?Askthemtosharetheiractionwiththeirsocial media followers and friends to improve viral sharing and increase your school’s reach.
10. Provide a Personal Touch through Interactive Media Your school’s online expects a personalized, interactive experience online. If you’re not providing it, they are less likely to feel engaged. Interactivity can mean different things to different people, so it’s key to offer multiple ways to interact.
Consider incorporating a virtual campus tour into your website. This can put families into their future state as you allow them to walk through campus, click on buildings, and see how students interact and learn.
Also, consider using short YouTube® videos of staff members answering frequently asked questions on your website. For example, rather than giving a dry text answer to “What’s your financialaidpolicy?”,youcouldgivethemapersonalizedresponse,evenfromfaraway,further personalizing their experience.
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CREATE AN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND FOR YOUR SCHOOL © 2010-2013 | T 800.443.9441 E [email protected] W www.blackbaud.com
About Blackbaud
Serving the nonprofit and education sectors for 30 years, Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) combines technology and expertise to help organizations achieve their missions. Blackbaud works with more than 28,000 customers in over 60 countries that support higher education, healthcare, human services, arts and culture, faith, the environment, independent K-12 education, animal welfare and other charitable causes. The company offers a full spectrum of cloud-based and on-premise software solutions and related services for organizations of all sizes including: fundraising, eMarketing, advocacy, constituent relationship management (CRM), financial management, payment services, analytics and vertical-specific solutions. Using Blackbaud technology, these organizations raise more than $100 billion each year. Recognized as a top company by Forbes, InformationWeek, and Software Magazine and honored by Best Places to Work, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com.
For more information go to www.blackbaud.com or contact your sales representative today!
ConclusionBy simply recognizing the importance of your online brand and checking your school’s website against these tips, you can make vast improvements to the level of engagement with your audience.
Calvin Coolidge once said, “We can’t do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” So get started making these small tweaks to your school’s online presence and watch your school’s online brand soar!
