“We know that students spend a lot of time on websites like Facebook, and we want to encourage them to interact with Algonquin College when they are online. The more engaged students are with the College, the more they will get out of their college experience,” says Doug Wotherspoon, Executive Director of Advancement at Algonquin College.

The contest looks to be part of a strategic shift towards social media marketing for the school. Here is the tie-in video released by the school (it asks students, instructors, and staff, “Why do you like Algonquin?”):

The great thing about this video (which makes good use of the of YouTube to showcase the school’s facilities, lab and work stations) and this contest is that it utilizes social media in the best possible way: by focusing on the voice of current and prospective students. The idea behind the contest, in fact, is quite ingenious, as asking students to submit videos incorporates various social media platforms, and can really spread the school’s marketing message to a large number of people.

You’ll remember that the National Academy of Health and Business, in Hamilton and Mississauga, also recently offered a Facebook contest. What these contests show is that schools are starting to understand the importance of social media marketing, and the need for a comprehensive strategic social media marketing plan. If done properly, this can improve the quality of your school’s presence on each of social media platform, increase the level of engagement of the followers/fans and your boost your share of social media voice, all while sticking to your original marketing and recruiting goals. What’s not to like?

The Algonquin College Facebook contest, by the way, will run until midnight on Friday, Feb. 17, with winners
announced the following week.

What do you think about Algonquin College’s Facebook contest?

Schools Training uses article marketing for colleges and universities to deliver education news, advice and tips. Articles cover a wide variety of fields and range from the benefits of certain career training and diploma programs, to news stories and press releases involve new programs, campuses and open houses.

Schools Training has already developed relationships with numerous career colleges across Canada and hopes to become a leading article marketing resource for schools, colleges and universities around the world. The directory has a “submit article” feature, which enables schools to post articles and press releases of their choosing. The service is completely free, and will give institutions the chance to improve their search engine rank and increase backlinks with simplified article marketing tool.

Check out Schools Training today for more information.

Every standard and custom report will now have an email scheduling option, shown below:

Clicking on “Email” will provide you with the following email scheduling box:

Google is also soliciting feedback regarding which scheduled email reports should be used in the new version. PDF export for every report will only be available within a few weeks.

They have also created a new Google user forum that will be specific to Analytics-related issues and topics, giving users a place to discuss the product with fellow analytics users. Much like reddit, visitors can earn karma by answering questions and commenting, though unlike the popular social bookmarking site (the “Internet’s front page”) they can earn badges and special designations (like “Top Contributor”).

What do you think about these updates to Google Analytics?

Studies are now showing that these post-secondary students may account for anywhere from a fifth to a third of the enrollment at these schools. ”The colleges have become kind of a finishing school for university graduates,” former Seneca College president Rick Miner said. ”All of our colleges work very closely with business and industry so we know what’s needed and how many jobs”.

During Milner’s tenure, enrollment of postgraduate students continued to increase, making up 15% of the full-time student population, and 50% of the part-timers.

There may be two factors playing into this: more than a third of immigrants to Canada—and more than half of those who have arrived since 2002—already have postsecondary degrees; and a growing notion that a university bachelor’s degree may not be as helpful finding work as practical, hands-on skills training at a college.

“A university degree used to be an entree to a job. [Employers] didn’t care if your degree was in archaeology—they’d take you into the accounting firm and train you for the job,” Ann Buller, president of Centennial College told The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Their university degree means they have a good, solid education but not necessarily something that translates easily into a job. We can help them discover their passion.”

What’s interesting will be to see how these schools change to reflect this new student body. Students with post-secondary degrees may be interested in more programs and courses that are specific to training skills that will be found in the workplace. They may also be used to a higher level of services and facilities. It’s entirely possible, then, that we’ll start seeing schools changing their course offerings if this trend persists (and as it has continued for close to a decade now, we think it’s safe to say that it will). It’s also very likely that Canadian career colleges will start changing the way they position themselves with regards to international leads and post-secondary prospective students. We’ve discussed the use of social media to attract foreign students. It seems likely that these techniques and more will be increasingly used to target university graduates.

What do you think is accounting for this rise in post-secondary students at career colleges? What will these schools have to do to continue attracting these students?

Datatel MOX™ provides access to:

• Important school phone numbers
• Contact information, including e-mail address and building locations
• Maps — Follow a GPS-enabled campus map to classroom buildings and other facilities. MOX™ easily locates buildings and provides directions using Google Maps (an invaluable tool for visiting students or freshmen trying to get to their first classes!)
• Events — information about upcoming campus events, including open houses, seminars, graduations and more
• News — “Campus Beat” news as provided on Mount Allison’s web site

It won’t be long before we see a lot more announcements like this one from Mount Allison University.

Historical data will not change, as this update will only affect Top Search Queries data going forward. It’s also helpful to remember that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same (or decrease), since lower-ranking URLs will no longer be averaged.

This is the example that Google provided of how the change will look:

Let’s say Nick searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Jane also searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we’ll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Nick’s search and 5 for Jane’s search), for an Average Position of 4.

You can test the updated Top Search Queries data feature here.

Meanwhile, Google is also making it possible to download Top Search Queries data programmatically, allow access to your search queries data in CSV format with an open source Python script. Click here for an example of how to download your search queries data with a Python script and upload it to a Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Check out a screenshot of a Google Search Queries spreadsheet:

What do you think of this update? Will it better reflect your search engine rank expectations?

Here is the official announcement from Paul Muret, the Director of Engineering at Google Analytics (and one of the founders of Urchin Software):

“The success of Google Analytics has been incredibly rewarding and humbling, and we are very thankful for the support of our early Urchin customers and investors. The Urchin Software product has now been completely overshadowed by its tremendously popular offspring. And so, it is time that we now complete the cycle by officially retiring the Urchin Software product and focus exclusively on online analytics. On behalf of the original Urchin crew and Google, we thank you and hope that we can continue to serve you with amazing products.” Read the rest of Paul Muret’s Urchin Software post here.

“Offspring” is a good way to describe the relationship between Google Analytics and Urchin. After all, the products were not exactly the same, and if anything, Urchin really set the stage for Google Analytics (or at least made it clear how important a tool like this could be). The major differences between the two came down to data collection, data storage and maintenance. Urchin analyzed log files, which actually tracks a few things missed by Google Analytics’ JavaScript, but it kept data in-house, requiring more technical maintenance.

New Urchin Software licenses will no longer be available after March this year.

Google will also be dropping Picnik photo editor, Google Sky Maps and Google Message Continuity, all of which would be considered major successes for other companies. Nevertheless, the cuts fit into Google CEO Larry Page’s new “more wood behind fewer arrows” strategy.

What do you think about Google shutting down Urchin Software?

Effective web design has to have a core message that is driven by clear-cut goals for your website and individual program pages. Once you’ve defined these goals (and it can be anything from clicking on certain links, requesting more information or booking a tour to visit the campus), the next step is designing navigation and layout that is clear, clean and conducive to achieving your goals.

Above all, the design of your website should:

• Convey credibility
  Visually, your website has to look as professional as possible. A shoddy looking website can do quite a bit of harm to lead generation efforts. If your site is badly organized, or visually uninteresting (or worse, cluttered and ugly), it will reflect badly on your institution and foster doubt in visitors. That’s not to say that you have to spend lots of money on designing a complex and flashy site. You just need something that looks credible.
• Avoid confusion
  A user should never be confused on your site. Every page has to have a clearly defined purpose and layout. Take steps to ensure that information regarding programs, courses, admissions and are easy to find and even easier to understand.
• Help users find what they’re looking for
  Don’t make it hard for people to find out about you. Consider someone’s first visit to your site. Is the information laid out in a way that makes sense? Is it easy to find admissions info? Do you have to click through multiple pages? Does the search function work? Every obstacle you put up is a blow to potential leads and future lead generation.

Basic Web Design Tips for Lead Generation

Pull Prospects into the Site
Generally speaking, prospective students will usually not inquire about programs from your home page. Usually, they need to be pulled into the site a little further into specific program pages. Provide enough content (a good idea is to mix text with photos and videos) and calls-to-action to get them going further into your site.

Know your audience
It probably sounds overly simplistic, but we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to know the audience you’re trying to target. If, for example, you’re hoping to attract more international students, there needs to be something in the web design that reflects this need, be it navigation, layout, content or a combination of the three. Once you know your audience, you’ll also be able to focus your keyword research and SEO tactics.

Focus on content
As we’ve said in the past, content is king, and the more engaging, varied and interesting your content is, the easier it will be to attract prospective students and online leads. Content can involve information on programs, diplomas, graduation ceremonies, seminars, open houses and more.

Make it easy to navigate
Don’t make users pull their hair out. The clearer the navigation paths provided, the more likely your efforts to improve online lead generation will bear fruit. An easy to navigate site structure makes it easy to get information.

Optimize your content and website
Keyword-rich content can then be optimized with contextual linking, interlinking and the use of relevant meta tags. The design of the site, however, should also be firmly rooted in SEO best practices, including the proper keyword-rich use of:

• URLs
• Headings
• Page titles
• Alt attributes
• Anchor text for internal and external links
• Meta descriptions
• Page text

What other website design principles have you followed?

What does all this mean? It means that every day, there are more people (and prospective students) using their smartphones to search for schools, programs and pretty much anything else under the sun. If you’re developing a school website, therefore, you absolutely have to recognize the importance of the mobile Web experience. It can, in fact, represent a huge opportunity for your school and program pages.

Never one to miss the obvious, Google is now getting in on act, with a campaign to help businesses understand how to benefit from mobile and how to promote your mobile offerings. Dubbed “GoMo” the campaign is an attempt to highlight mobile best practises in order to create the best possible mobile-friendly sites.

Here are GoMo’s mobile best practises:

 
At the GoMo website, you can find a number of mobile resources and tools, including helpful talking points and mobile sales pitch tips. They are also offering a free, customized report with their GoMoMeter feature, which testes to see how mobile friendly your school site it.

To emphasize the necessity for a mobile-friendly site, here is a behind the scenes look at how Google itself developed a mobile version of their search engine:

What do you think? What are the key elements to going mobile?

Before we get into some Web design basics, you should know a few general things about Internet users.

Website visitors:

• Appreciate quality
  Quality content helps create credibility and trust, and can sometimes even overcome clumsy design. Focus on creating quality content. Remember “Content is King”.
• Scan pages
  Most users only scan the page, searching for fixed points or anchors that can guide them through the site. There is an element of instant gratification here, and if your site doesn’t meet user expectations, they will leave and look elsewhere.
• Want control
  Probably more than anything, users want to control their browser. Don’t bombard them with pop-ups and obstacles.

With these in mind, here are some tips to improving usability in your web design:

Keep it simple
This should be the guiding principle of your site design. Remember that users, who only scan pages, are looking for quality content. Don’t bury it in unnecessarily complex design. Keep things simple.

Every page, in other words, should be self-explanatory. The goal should be for clear navigation and site architecture that provides visual clues and easily understandable links. Don’t confuse your users.

Make it obstacle-free
The patience of your visitors is a finite thing, and you don’t want to squander that. The less action required from users to experience your content, the more likely they will. Let users explore your site without forcing them to create accounts, register or download PDF files.

Use visuals
Some aspects of your user interface attract more attention than others. Try, where possible, to break up text with images, videos and paragraph breaks. Aside from making it easier to read, this will also help attract the eye.

Focus on effective Web writing
When populating your site, try to use:

• Short paragraphs
• Concise phrases
• Categories and headers
• Bullet lists
• Highlighted keywords
• Simple language

It’s also a good idea to use a fixed font size throughout the site and to change the color of visited links. These may seem like small things, but they all add up and improve the overall experience on your site.

Use calls-to-action
No matter what the goal (signing up to newsletter or driving people to social media/blog), calls-to-action can get people’s attention. Make visual cues to these actionable buttons or forms to get the most conversion / lead generation.

Be consistent
Don’t make every program page a new learning experience for your visitors. A lack of consistency throughout your school site will only frustrate users. Be consistent and users will quickly understand what to expect from your site’s navigation, structure, text and search features, among other areas.

Test everything!
Let’s put this simply: if you want a great website, you have to test its usability on a regular basis. Test, fix and text again. This process has to be repeated on a continuous basis. Usability testing provides insights into issues that may not have been noticeable in the design and development stage.

What other tactics has your school done to improve the usability of its website?