Newspapers reported that Brexit has had an effect on British universities rankings, with UK institutions falling in global lists. Stephen Morgan says concern persists around the current political climate in the UK.
Apprehension surrounds marketers in the Higher Education (HE) sector about how they will continue to attract students when Britain leaves the EU.
One area that Higher Education marketers should address is their online user experience. The university website is the first touchpoint for all stakeholders. So, whether it targets parents, students or prospective students, it needs to create a positive image of the brand. It must also enable the user to find the information they need about the institution quickly and easily.
Tech giants such as Deliveroo and ASOS place consumers at the heart of their brand experience and students now expect experiences of this high standard from their universities. The HE sector can learn from these brands who have engaged their audiences so well by building websites or apps specifically for the user, rather than the business itself.
Marketers can lead digital transformation
One of the largest universities in the UK’s capital, London Southbank University (LSBU), realised that its website consisted of an astounding 286,000 distinct URLs, distributed across 130 domains and sub-domains. With so many different pages and contributors, LSBU was faced with a diluted brand and disjointed service for the user when navigating around the site. It wasn’t a website built for the student.
Sitemorse, the independent digital insight provider, had ranked the LSBU website in the 179th spot nationally in their league table of HE websites, something that the marketing team knew they needed to improve to compete against universities that had seamless websites. LSBU partnered with Squiz to ensure that it had the ability to provide an outstanding customer experience and a solidified brand, and ultimately aimed to increase site visits by 40,000 per month and increase student applications by 8%. The marketing team realised that digital user experience was damaging their brand and instigated a digital transformation project to change this.
Customers come first
The first step for LSBU was the decision by the IT and marketing teams to completely transform the external-facing website so that it put the user first. In order to do this, Squiz prioritised delivering clear workflow processes, a sturdy infrastructure and quick updates, while keeping the university’s site on brand. Squiz worked to empower the LSBU marketing team and their technology. The team behind the site had an important role to play and they were engaged from start to finish, understanding why these changes needed to be made from a marketing and transformation perspective.
Creating straightforward, compelling and consistent content was also one of the most important goals for LSBU. By using Squiz’s Matrix CMS system, there was no longer a need for complicated hand-coded pages and time consuming updates were phased out. Content is now simplified through a central governance structure, educating and allowing all teams (from Marketing and Communications to Events) to schedule updates. These are then managed through a bespoke automated workflow so that all staff can contribute and fulfil their job roles to the best of their ability. It also ensures that rich, engaging content flows throughout the website, making the user experience simple, informative and useful.
The results are in:
The target was to increase visits by 40,000 per month by the end of the first year; this would match the level of LSBU’s competitors, a target that was surpassed by the new site. Similarly, post project LSBU saw a 13% increase in conversions – beating the target of 8%. These results were achieved, despite the complexity of the project, on time and under budget.
After the launch in 2013, LSBU’s new website reached 60th in the Sitemorse ranking, a result the team were very proud of. At Squiz, we love working with organisations that strive to improve their user experience and, in 2015, after partnering with Sitemorse to iteratively better their offering, the LSBU website consistently reached the top 20.
In order to reach the number 1 spot, LSBU and Sitemorse, with assistance from the Squiz team, worked to break down the final barriers to the summit of the rankings by improving coding and accessibility throughout the website. On 16th May 2016, the hard work had paid off. The website has gone one better, now holding the number 1 spot – a great achievement and congratulations all round.
Joe Hoyle, senior manager, Digital Marketing, said: “The Squiz Matrix CMS has transformed the way we work. Chris Morrison, our lead developer at Squiz, deserves a special mention. Throughout the project to build the new site he proved to be dedicated, innovative and professional – always willing to go that little bit further to find a solution.”
The project has resulted in the university being represented as they should be, helping to make their physical presence and culture, digital. LSBU is an organisation at the top of their game and we’ve enjoyed tackling the unique problems faced in Higher Education, together.
The ranking by Sitemorse has seen the London South Bank University rise to top the league table. The university has appeared in 20 Sitemorse surveys since October 2011, most recently scoring 9.16 in 2016 Q3. This graph depicts the ten most recent survey results. Sitemorse sales manager Dave Harper said: “London South Bank University approached us at the end of 2015 and asked if we could help them to achieve a better website with a higher ranking in our Quarterly INDEX, a report of all organisations in a particular sector, by providing the most thorough reports available. LSBU were already scoring well and were ranked just outside the top 10 in the previous two INDEXes, but they wanted to improve further and to do that they needed to be informed of all the issues affecting their website so that they could fix them. “To be ranked number one of an INDEX which includes 329 of your peers is a fantastic achievement and we are delighted that all the hard work and dedication has paid off.”
To sum up:
Over the last three years, the digital experience that LSBU offers to students has completely transformed, creating a truly streamlined brand. The site came 1st in 2016 in the Sitemorse ranking of Higher Education and Further Education sites, and ranked 2nd for all websites worldwide by Sitemorse. LSBU also completely surpassed their target of 40,000 visitors per month to their site, resulting in a 13% application conversion rate. In addition, the team has been empowered to maintain the interface internally and is in-tune with the marketing team’s vision when it comes to digital transformation.
The LSBU website is the only HE and FE sector site to exceed the Sitemorse target score of eight out of ten, having achieved 8.3, also scoring significantly higher than most large companies such as Apple, John Lewis and Amazon.
Universities must address their user experience if they are to continue attracting students in the post-Brexit era. The website gives students a first impression of the university’s brand so an innovative, satisfying user experience will increasingly set them apart. By ensuring that every single part of the website gives an accurate representation of the university and highlights the most important information seamlessly, prospective students will be engaged and more willing to complete their application process. Capturing students digitally is the new currency in HE marketing.