My bias is toward a balance between marketing and usability, but the bias gives more initial credence to usability than to marketing. Why? Because you can market the hell out of a site, a subsection or page, but if people don’t know it exists, then it doesn’t matter. That’s my main criticism of the DU homepage- It looks great (which is valuable in and of itself), but it comes at the expense of visitors (prospective students) getting their tasks completed slower and more inefficiently. The most powerful way to manage this tension is to 1) ensure your basic usability requirements are met and 2) make that basic usable framework as beautiful as possible.

If we look at the Apple and Google examples on this page (you can click them to access full size versions), you see this 1-2 approach put into practice. Google is a usable site. It gives visitors a short overview of the conference, easy to find/use links to additional information and a big button to join. But is it beautiful? Has it leveraged good marketing principles? Well, it does provide user generated content to breathe some life into the page, but I would argue that it’s not an engaging presence. It has leaned too far toward usability by disregarding the power good marketing would provide.

Apple’s page also provides basic information on the conference, links to additional information and a big button to join. The difference is that Apple takes that basic usable form and packages it with more marketing muscle. The page is beautiful. It’s engaging, active and makes me want to go in order to be a part of the energy depicted. This is a page that has found a good balance between marketing an usability.

Both conferences, being as high profile as they are, will undoubtedly sell out (Google’s already has as of this writing) so you could make a counter argument that Google’s lack of marketing didn’t hinder them. In fact, they likely saved money and time by avoiding the marketing point of view. True enough. But which conference do you want to be a part of?Related Posts:

• Tension Between Marketing and Usability: Part 1
• On Apple & Adobe Flash
• Communicating With Students Beyond Email
• Centralization Around Audience
• The New University of Denver Site In A Nutshell

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Before we dive into the details, we need to define marketing and usability. By “marketing” I mean a perspective that exults the intangible- largely subjective areas like branding and visual aesthetics. By “usability” I mean a perspective that exults the tangible- things that are perceived to be objective through testing and measurement like navigation and functionality controls, categorization and flow of information. I realize you may disagree on my definitions, but for the sake of argument, I’m not here to say one is better than the other so feel free to change the definitions in your own mind. I support both as I’ve defined them. You should ensure that your visitors are represented through testing and measurement, but you also need to be a leader sometimes and do what you feel is necessary even if it’s contrary to user’s wishes. The two can work in tandem, but so often fail to do so. However, that is not a recipe for disaster in and of itself.

A higher ed site could go in either direction. DU’s homepage is squarely in the marketing corner while the task of finding degree information is squarely in the usability corner, yet neither truly works as intended for me, not to disrespect Nick’s conclusions. The homepage does indeed have impact and bucks the usual higher ed trend, but does it work? It does if you want to grab attention and differentiate yourself from the pack (I’ll assume a prospective undergrad student audience). But do students want different or do they want ease of use or a sense of what life at DU is like or something else? Is the leadership inherent in publishing such a bold homepage good or bad? I’d argue that the homepage misses the mark.

I don’t see any reason to be bold here when so much of our own research and those of DU’s consultants over the years points to the fact that people researching what college to attend are more interested in getting the four big questions answered as opposed to being “marketed” to:

1. Does the school offer the degree I’m interested in?
2. Am I qualified to attend this school?
3. Will I fit in socially/do I see myself being happy at this school?
4. Can I (and/or my folks) afford it?

How many of these does the DU homepage answer (or how many of these questions can you easily get to if you make your way to an internal page within the DU site)? To varying degrees, there are links and clues for each of them, but they’re overwhelmed by the gigantic photo and audience links. This page is more about DU than it is about DU’s customers.

UPDATE 4/29/2010: I decided to expand on this idea using a non-higher ed example.Related Posts:

• Tension Between Marketing and Usability: Part 2
• Higher Ed Sites Have A Huge Advantage: A Captive Audience
• Marketing ≠ Visitor Experience
• Virtues of “The Site”
• 4 Steps to Determine the Optimal Page Width for New Sites

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We usually clammer for more people, more money and more tools as salvation. They’re not. Those things will solve today’s problems, but new ones will arrive tomorrow. No set of widgets, plug-ins or third party add-ons will stop the inevitable. No workflow, processes or project manager from heaven stands a chance. Can you think of any CMS so good that it doesn’t let anything through the cracks? I can’t. Can we supersize it to an EMS and lick the problem? That’ll probably make it worse.

I bring all this up because after two days of great information and conversations at the AMA Higher Ed Symposium, It’s clear that higher ed is lurching forward in fits and starts to leverage all the wondrous new tools and services appearing daily on the Web. But in all the excitement and drama lies the everyday needs of everyone’s website. You’ve gotta remember to take care of the small, non-glamorous details that keep your site alive and well. Don’t lose sight of the daily grind because entropy is always there with you.

Is there hope? Well… just about the only thing any of us can muster in defense is vigilance. Stay attentive, be nimble and don’t let small problems fester into big ones. Keep the daily grunt work moving along efficiently, but also keep an eye on what’s coming up ahead. If the new thing on the horizon goes unchecked until it’s too late to deal with effectively, you lose. It’ll turn your hard work and good intentions into chaos and doubt. Don’t let it get to that.Related Posts:

• Communicating With Students Beyond Email
• On Apple & Adobe Flash
• The 1-to-1 Relationship
• How To Turn Around A Problematic Site
• Flickr for Photo Workflow

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All employees at your school serve the greater ideals of the institution which, in turn, should ultimately revolve around the needs and wants of it’s various audiences. As such, an internal request must be measured against the established frameworks of the institution’s long term strategy. To say yes to every request will not only dilute the strategy and bottleneck any forward progress (because there will never be enough time and people to handle all requests), it’ll ultimately confuse and frustrate your true clients.Related Posts:

• Stick To Your Guns
• Flickr for Photo Workflow
• Marketing ≠ Visitor Experience
• The New University of Denver Site In A Nutshell
• Content Management Systems Aren’t Just For Techies

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So where does decentralization make sense? The obvious answer is content. Higher ed sites are large, if not huge, relative to many websites and the thought of centralizing that amount of content into a few hands doesn’t seem practical. The sheer workload would jeopardize the distribution of time sensitive information. Plus, no content person wants to work in a sweat shop environment were quality takes a backseat to simply getting the work out. And beyond even those practical concerns, will a content person be as passionate about every subject that comes across their desk as the people who live and breathe it?For those reasons, content ought to be unleashed.

This isn’t anything new Mike

OK, so a decentralized content scheme isn’t a new idea, but my point is that simply because it’s smart to decentralize content creation doesn’t mean ALL aspects of the web effort should go along with it. This includes strategy, information architecture, visual design and functionality. There’s no credible reason that I’m aware of that would cause me to believe that every dean, vice chancellor, and director at the university should control how their part of the website works or functions. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be at the table to discuss matters that affect them, but neither should they be allowed to dictate needs on a per site section basis either. This is how workloads get out of hand.

Give me an example

If group A wants to promote news, group B wants to promote events and group C wants to promote both, what happens in a decentralized world? The web team gives each group exactly what they want. But if information architecture is centralized, then you would look at all groups in totality. You would take all wants and needs into consideration en masse. Only then can you create a solution that can be sustained over the long haul in an efficient manner. In our example, you might come to the conclusion that lots of groups across campus will want to promote news and/or events. So instead of building standalone news and event solutions plus one that handles both, you could merge news and events into a single steam called what’s happening. Any group on campus could then tap into this single solution. Group A doesn’t have events? No problem, no events populate their content, but the “what’s happening” label still makes sense. Same goes for group B in reverse.

Technology folks will of course try to build solutions with modularity in mind, but this only goes so far. News and events is an easy example since we all know those ideas will port across many departments. But what about requests that have limited universal appeal or practicality? Do you build it? The answer lies in your overall strategy. 

You may not have a global strategy precisely because of the decentralized environment. But once centralization occurs, that all changes. You should have a basic understanding of what your site is supposed to achieve and for whom. In that light, a request for a specific feature that is only useful to a certain group or for a particular, somewhat rare occasion should be looked at suspiciously. If your site is supposed to communicate with prospective students and entice them to apply, then there may not be a good case, for example, in building a Blackboard login function. I’m not saying Blackboard doesn’t have utility, but not for your prospective student audience nor to achieve your goal to drive applications . The correct answer in this case would be a polite “no.”

Instead, I see many sites, our own included, take on projects to fulfill any and all requests without much critical thought as to their strategic value. So more projects enter the queue, timelines stretch out, both clients and customers get frustrated over the slow progress, staff morale suffers and the website becomes ever more confused. I would imagine that if you looked at your institution’s workload, you’d find a significant amount to be, at best, tangential to your main goals and, at worst, unrelated at all. Kill those projects and focus. Centralize the high level, strategic functions your group provides while you decentralize the ground level content that gives visitors localized flavor.Related Posts:

• Centralization Around Audience
• Stick To Your Guns
• Why Decentralization Doesn’t Work
• The Speed of Twitter
• Who is Your Client?

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Selling the general ideas about centralization is easy. Most people will see the utility and efficiency that a global site experience promises for both visitors and internal maintenance personnel. The problem comes when the idea is fully explored and all of its implications are brought to light. For some people or groups, the thought of sharing a single visitor experience with the rest of the university is a deal breaker. The art department doesn’t want to look like the business school, for instance. That’s a perfectly fine and logical way to feel, but it’s beside the point. Let’s explore why.

I argue that within a centralized system you must align the site’s organization and navigation based on audience type: prospective students, current students, employees, etc. This approach will force you to ask certain questions. For prospective students, one such question is “does an 18-year-old think in terms of department, school, college, and division names or in terms of subject matter?” Based on my research, the answer is subject matter (after all, high schools work this way). This suggests that the best method of navigation is therefore by subject matter, not individual unit names. And again, research shows this approach does indeed work well when tested. Given this exercise, the issue is not that the art department looks like the business school. That’s irrelevant because we’re not offering a navigation system that compares one department against another. Instead, we’re offering a navigation system based on subject matter and I think we’d all agree that individual degree programs shouldn’t have individualized brands. So, we can now conclude that a single visitor experience does not pigeon hole or force any internal group to act or be represented like any other group because we’ve abstracted that perspective away for a better one.Related Posts:

• Why Decentralization Doesn’t Work
• The Case for Centralization
• How To Turn Around A Problematic Site
• Centralization Around Audience
• A New Take on How to Find a Higher Ed Degree

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To start, I find that any higher ed site’s success, to varying degrees, is predicated upon the success of the underlying organization’s culture. Karlyn hits upon this idea, but let’s explore the idea further. A good study of contrasts is Bush versus Obama. Bush’s administration was secretive. They weren’t transparent to traditional media and certainly weren’t blogging about their grand plans or otherwise harnessing the power of the internet. Conversely, Obama, through his campaign and now in the White House, has embraced the web. It’s too early to tell how his efforts will turn out, but initial signs point toward Obama being highly transparent. Whitehouse.gov proves the fact with blogging, video, RSS, etc.- all the tools we champion. If we worked under the Bush administration, our efforts would likely have been wasted. Under Obama, however, we would likely flourish. Culture matters.

There’s an inherent connection between an organization’s website and its culture. There’s a 1-to-1 relationship in many regards. For example, if the culture is one of decentralized control (something I talk at length about at this site), it’ll most certainly be reflected in the site through a blizzard of different looking, different navigating and different functioning department level sites. The org chart dictates the website’s structure- the 1-to-1 relationship in action. If you wish to do structure your site differently than this, then you need to change the organization’s underlying “departmental think.” Therein lies the rub. How can you change the website if the culture doesn’t change with it? You might be able to achieve change at the website level, but without the commensurate change in culture, it’s likely your changes will fizzle.

So how can you make substantive change and make it stick? Begin to the 1-to-1 relationship idea with those above you. The people in upper management are smart- regardless of the stereotypes which portray them as otherwise. However, their problems and issues are, for them, larger than the web. I think the key is to show them that the web is simply a microcosm of their larger issues because of the 1-to-1 relationship. If you can convince them of that slight change in perspective, then you might get a crack at something big.

Upper management may regard the web as a cost saving tool for communications, for instance, but its insight ends there. What this scenario lacks is the ability to get management to go the necessary distance to realize that the website is a reflection of  the organization itself. If you want to utilize the web as a cost saving tool, then it needs to come with a commensurate change in culture in order to bake in those savings. You have to ask tough questions and demand answers. If we move some amount of our printed materials online to save printing and delivery costs, will print designers lose their jobs? Will the newsroom writers write fewer stories, but do so in both print and online version? Does news even have to be written by “official” writers as opposed to having an editor who reviews news written by people at large across campus? The onion layers, once peeled back, expose the true trade-offs and choices that need to be made. None of that deep thinking is expressed in “let’s save money by using the web.” Planting the seeds of this idea will begin to open people to the substantive issues at hand which in turn will lead to better understanding and willingness to lend attention and action.Related Posts:

• What Higher Ed Sites Could Learn From Barack Obama
• Communicating With Students Beyond Email
• CMS- Proprietary or Open Source?
• The Case for Centralization
• Why Decentralization Doesn’t Work

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In terms of niche uses, deep within the bowels of sprawling higher ed sites, open source can take hold, though mostly because it’s out of sight, out of mind. Butin terms of larger, more conspicuous efforts, like a CMS, open source doesn’t pass muster. I think the reason for that is precisely because open source isn’t proprietary. There’s no company or person to hold responsible if and when things go bad. In a highly CYA environment like higher ed, this is a killer characteristic. Now, there is a warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with a proprietary solution, which is the flip side of the coin. Accountability for something as crucial as a CMS is needed and for officials, this safety net is a needed given. They don’t want to worry about who is minding the store, because that service came with the price tag. So, OK, peace of mind is surely nothing to belittle, but c’mon. Open source only means that you’re relying on your own people to mind the store, which is their job anyway. If they themselves get into a problem they can’t get out of, then there’s a universe of contributors that can be tapped- nothing wrong with that. The in-house team should give back as well as part of their jobs, but this would certainly come at a smaller cost than some proprietary CMS vendors.

Beyond authority and responsibility concerns come the lure of lofty promises. When a proprietary CMS maker visits for a sales demo, things are rosy. They present a tidy world, crafted to sell (and where everything, of course, works as advertised). It’s a CMS, it’s a document repository, it’s workflow, it’s collaboration, or maybe it’s all of the above. Why not pay for one solution and kill many birds with one stone? The tech people will figure out the details and make it all work, right? Right. 

The issue I have with all this is not proprietary vs. open source per se, but rather that none of the problems the new tool is supposed to solve are technical in nature. Most problems have an institutional basis that technology won’t solve. Do you have an editorial process? CMSs don’t provide those. Do you exist in a transparent culture where people can, in their good judgement, post what they feel is necessary to get their job done online? Probably not and a CMS doesn’t come with the authority to allow this. Are the right kind of people in place and are they given enough time to adequately participate in the social media scene that has engulfed schools? A CMS doesn’t come with extroverts out of the box.

in the end, I side with the open source approach. I’ve certainly drank the “social media is the future” Kool-Aid which heavily impacts my stance, but aside from that, I think an open source approach has the best chance to accommodate user needs instead of the other way around- bending people to work within a proprietary system. That’s just good sense.
 Related Posts:

• Link Journalism
• Tension Between Marketing and Usability: Part 1
• On Apple & Adobe Flash
• Marketing ≠ Visitor Experience
• Centralization Around Audience

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• A lot of the “early” tweets I see, ironically, link to or are part of a link chain that trace back to a traditional news media outlet which squashes my main point. That said though, I don’t follow every news company out there so in effect, comparing the news outlets I do follow vs. all my other non-media follows, the peeps win the race to inform me often.
• This only happens with national or international news. For local coverage, @denverpost is much faster. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a local news tweet from anyone I follow. @denverpost is the only game in town in this regard. 
• I’m not the only one who has noticed this trend: @isaacson said not long ago… wow twitter is ridiculously ahead of CNN and the mainstream news in reporting the #GAZA ceasefire. Also, I took a screenshot (but it’s at home, I’ll update when I can UPDATE: Screenshot below) of two tweets on the same subject next to one another in my Twitterific stream. CNN was the later tweet.
• I wonder if anyone DMs or replies to their local newspaper or TV news station about niche news events in hopes that the news organizations could then broadcast (or, more likely, re-broadcast) to its followers as a micro-local news stream. They could add those mentions in their main Twitter account or, if the barrage became too spammy for a general public audience (which by definition it would be), they could set up separate Twitter accounts. But I suppose at that point, the Twitter accounts become so niche focused, the effort involved would outweigh the number of followers. Then again, maybe they could have a local feed and a micro-local feed and let people choose for themselves. Anyway, something to consider- and it probably has, I just haven’t come across it.

Here’s the Twitterific screenshot I mentioned above. Cameron Moll beat CNN to the punch.

Related Posts:

• Communicating With Students Beyond Email
• Centralization Around Audience
• Use link titles as a check on your architecture decisions
• Link Journalism
• There’s A Happy Medium Between Centralization & Decentralization

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My issue with that argument is that, taken to its logical conclusion, every single department at the university essentially gets a different website. House them all under the www.yourUniversity.edu umbrella and you get the mess that is the modern higher ed website of today. Upper management is glad to see that every department gets individualized marketing attention and department personnel feel good that they have the ability to communicate uniquely.

Of course, in none of this acclaim and back slapping has the customer — students — had a voice. From their point of view, they experience a hodgepodge of loosely associated websites all claiming to be the same university. They struggle to find information because there’s no single underlying structure. They’re frustrated, but have no recourse because there’s only one university site to go to (it’s not like they can click to a competitor school’s site to get the information they need- they’re a captive audience in this respect). 

A centralized approach to higher ed sites does take away the ability to have unique designs for every department, but I will argue that this is a minor inconvenience at most and a complete red herring at least. A single “look and feel” doesn’t equate to an inability to be unique. All you have to do is look to the Obama presidential campaign to see this in practice (hat tip to the Higher Ed Marketing Blog for the link).

Obama, running for president of the United States, arguably has to speak to many more diverse audiences than does a university. Yet, all of his communications, all of his messages and all of his marketing materials down to the fonts and color palette are all the same regardless of whether he’s talking to a group of senior citizens at a nursing home or to college students at a campus rally.

Any well planned strategy will transcend low level squabbles about “our students are special, give us a custom website.” It doesn’t matter that anthropology students as a group are different from math students. What is important is that they all share the same kinds of needs in terms of wanting academic program information, tuition and financial aid information, social activity information, sports and athletic program information, and so on as your research indicates. Those commonalities should direct how and why your website is the way it is. Obama successfully communicated a single brand to a giant melting pot of diverse people on a national scale. It can surely be done at a university.Related Posts:

• Marketing ≠ Visitor Experience
• The New University of Denver Site In A Nutshell
• Virtues of “The Site”
• A New Take on How to Find a Higher Ed Degree
• The 1-to-1 Relationship

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