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A
little marketing alchemy: department tools
By
Inside WSU staff
Our
base ingredient: more and more prospective students who are turning
to the Web to research universities and colleges. Providing a strong
impression is becoming a much more important part of efforts to
market the university to those prospective students.
Mix
in a diverse, varied campus, with an even more diverse Web presence,
full of pages that have not been updated in years, pages that don’t
look like they belong to the same institution.
Add
to that a dash of Web developers — far too few to create and
maintain pages for each department.
Stir
this all together over a low heat, salt to taste, and what will
you get? A mess. But there’s a solution on the way that should
help the university and individual departments present themselves
better online to the public.
The
department tools, which will be launched late this semester, have
been in development in the Office of University Communications since
early last spring. The idea stems from that office’s experience
with creating and maintaining other Web sites and pages.
John
Jones, online managing editor, has worked on the department tools
project since its initial conception.
"What
we’re seeing, in one study after another, is that prospective
students are depending more and more on the Web to do their research
about a university. These students want to see the life and energy
of a university online, and a few static Web pages that have not
been updated in a few years do not do justice to WSU. We needed
to find a way to present the university as a vibrant, dynamic community
online — and give each department and office the ability to
present themselves in a way that is both consistent with the look
and feel of the campus community as a whole, as well as the tools
to provide their own dynamic content for those pages."
Mark
Eby, WSU’s new director of interactive marketing, sees promoting
a consistent look for the university Web pages as important for
marketing efforts. "Users are looking for a consistent image and
navigation from the university. These tools will allow users to
become familiar with university sites and understand that they are
all related to each other in some way."
The
tools are all Web-based, which means that the users will not need
to have their own Web development software. The tools have been
designed to be as easy to use as possible, so that users with little
or no Web experience can create and maintain the content on their
pages.
"Most
departments and offices that have Web pages don’t have dedicated
staff to maintain them," says Jones, "and very often the staff person
working on those pages does not have a lot of time or experience
with the Web. These tools will make it fast and easy to keep the
content of each department’s pages fresh and dynamic."
Many
of the tools that will be offered are already used on the main university
pages, including the calendar of events, news, and e-mail news digest.
The
department tools will include:
•
A homepage builder, which will allow users to create a Web site,
as many pages as the department needs and a navigation system for
the pages.
•
An online calendar of events.
•
A tool for creating and maintaining news stories and announcements
for the page.
•
An e-mail newsletter tool to create a newsletter and maintain a
mailing list.
•
A discussion forum.
University
communications is currently beta-testing the tools. Several departments
have volunteered to help to whip the tools into shape.
Jones
and Eby plan to open the tools to the university by the end of the
fall semester.
"There
are still a few functions to add and a few details to iron out,"
says Jones. "Our beta testers will help us sort out the problems
and tailor the tools more to the needs of our users."
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