The importance of university web pages in selecting a higher education institution

Angelika Sharygina
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very excited to welcome you to the very first world higher education market Summit. And today's topic is crucial for every University; it's a critical topic to maximize the online presence of the University and the importance of university web pages in selecting a higher education institution. This is very important for every higher education today. Because most students make their choices based on the online presence and the digital footprint of the University is essential for every higher institution. And today, I'm honored and privileged to be joined by an expert and leader in this field. Alex Moss, Alex is the director of precast, the online marketing and marketing consultancy web design, branding, and WordPress development agency. He is also co-founder of BD, of WordPress theme framework powered by Bootstrap. And also he has a great interest in Italian wine. as the owner of basil and Lily, this is wonderful to have you here. And it's super important for everyone who has just tuned in to listen about this critical topic of university web pages and how it affects students' selection. So Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Where are you right now? Where are you joining us from?

Alex moss
Thanks for having me, Angelica. Yeah, I'm based in Manchester. I'm actually in the countryside near Manchester, called home Firth. It's the place where they filmed the show called The Last of the Summer Wine, which is a top-rated British show where absolutely nothing happens for 30 years.

Angelika Sharygina
That's, that's wonderful. Well, Alex, this, this is excellent to have you here. Because many universities have such a solid offline presence, their libraries are rich, and their facilities are excellent. But there is no way to describe this online. And this is a massive issue for many universities across the world. And every year, 1000s of students make a decision that will significantly impact their lives. And they choose what college they want to attend. And this decision affects their professional development earnings screwy. And primarily, this is based on the online presence of the University on their social media on the web. What would you think is the most why this is happening? And what do you think is the most important right now for every institution worldwide to understand about web pages and why this is essential to be digitally active?

Alex moss
Sure. Well, I'll go back to my university application process, which was in 2003. So, I'm showing my age now, where universities didn't even have websites. So back then, we'll all remember how the application process was; you knew about some universities, you might visit them if you could, but if not, you had to order a prospectus, you know, the brochure selling that University. In short, think of that website as an online version of that prospectus. So, if you're making someone, if you're trying to talk someone into coming and attending your University, you have to impress them because you compete with all the other universities not just in your region, but in your country, in the continent, and of course, globally. Mainly because we've got a very online world where anyone from anywhere can go on any website and be we've got a small world in terms of travel, which means that anyone say from Jordan can travel to somewhere like England and have their education, their higher education here. What you guys want to do is stop that from happening and keep everyone in or in fact, actually attract people the other way and make people come to your University to help them gain a higher education.

And then also, to think of once they finish their education process. One thing that some universities like to do, I know in England, is nurture those students so that they don't move away once the education is complete. So if you were a university in Dubai, most universities, I would think would like to maybe communicate more with companies that take interns and graduates so that that person stays in Dubai, and fulfills their career there, and then will always look back to the original place where they got their higher education decided to remain in the place they were learning. But back to why it's essential that the audience is between 18 and 25. And anyone over 25 will be scarce. So you've got to think, where will those people find information about you? And the answer is from their smartphone, in short, and they are more in tune with technology than any, even me, or anyone who's listening right now. So it's thought of as a shop window, where you have to impress a prospective student because unless you're one of the top 1%, you have to talk them into it rather than the other way around.

Angelika Sharygina
This is very important for every institution to understand. And my next question would be to you, as a leader in this field as an expert, what would you recommend for universities because it is quite a, is quite an investment to have this very impactful online digital presence, and many universities that they are trying to cut down those expenses.
But what do you think is essential, like the bare minimum, that every website, every University's website, has to be there to recognized and have that presence?

Alex moss
Okay, I would split it into two, a well-performing website. So, something that loads fast, and I can get into that technicality later. And the other thing is content. And when I say content, I don't just mean words, which are essential, but also imagery, videos, and social content. Because again, your audience using Twitter, Facebook, and even Tik Tok, and more progressive universities tend to target where the audience is. So, for example, there's no point in posting much about your new courses on LinkedIn. Because not many students looking for a university degree are on LinkedIn, they usually join it and get more active as they're finishing University and want to go on to get a job. So, in short, performance and content are your key things to focus on.

Angelika Sharygina
This is very important, but I wanted to ask you also: when we look at the website, we want everything to be easy, right? So how can we make these website pages as easy as possible, as intuitive as possible? That when a student goes to these websites, they understand that okay, this is very easy to scroll, and it's very user-friendly. And what are the key things here to make it very intuitive for the user?

Alex moss
There are several ways. So one of them is the correct visual impact at the beginning. When I say the beginning is in the first visit, the first thing they see, even before they start scrolling, a term called above the fold, means anything you see without doing anything to the website. And in that part, you have to provide a lot of information, but in a very neat and tidy way. So it doesn't overload the visitor. So if I go back to your website, is your storefront if you're a large shop that has multiple floors that sell different things, with concessions, for example, you don't want just to let someone walk in that shop and have someone come up to you and start talking to you about everything that's in the store. You go in, and there are things that you are an easy sell for a store itself, and that's usually on the ground floor, which is generally what sunglasses, perfume, and stuff like that. And then, when you know that you want something, in particular, a fridge or freezer, you can walk past all of those little things and go up to exactly where you need to go. So in those kinds of departments, you also notice things like you know when you near the left and the escalator or the elevator and you see that it's kind of well, this is a sitemap.

Essentially, it lists everything in the store and exactly where they are. So how content is streamlined is just like a store, but online. So again, it has to go back to the audience as well. And if you're happy for me to shut out, I can't share the screen. So you may want to make me a host. And I'm so glad to share the screen of a couple of universities.

Okay, so I'll show you a few different universities in England. And the first one is the University of Cambridge; it's highly academic and exceptionally well known. And even here, you can see that it doesn't seem like the, you know, the old-fashioned formality of the University of Cambridge; they, they're showing young people, the thing that I see above the fold without actually scrolling anywhere is that they are focusing on technology here with the use of Raspberry Pi. And watching kids of all ages get involved. We also see that they split things into undergraduates and postgraduate because, generally, that's what you want to see. And here is a video. So this is excellent content here. If I don't like to read everything, or maybe if I don't understand English as my first language, I can press play here and still gain what I need to understand precisely what the University of Cambridge offers me. And then, after this, they'll show you different areas of the site and research that the University is partaking in. So if you're specialized in a subject, by the time you're in higher education, you may find that Cambridge is a much better university than any other university based on the research they're doing, which is relevant to that student. So that's another thing. And lastly, alumni, and showing people who used to attend that University and how that they are active today in the professional sense, and anything they may do that relates to the University.

Another example, I guess, is Patrick Stewart, who famously played, had done who he played Professor Xavier in X-Men and other things. He's now a patron of the University of Huddersfield, which is very close to me now, where he grew up. There's the latest news and everything because everyone needs to understand precisely what the universities are doing both in terms of the course and what they're doing in the educational sector. And lastly, one thing to show you here is the menu. This is called a burger menu because it's three lines and looks like a burger. But if you were to show this, it shows you this is the site map; I was telling you about the escalator, where it leads you to every element of precisely what's on the site and how to get there to make it easy for each person.

So this one is very formal. This is the University of Oxford, again just as prestigious as the University of Cambridge. And again, it looks incredibly modern. It's very current; it's talking about things happening in Ukraine and how maybe the University of Oxford is helping the crisis there. Again, using events, including open days, stuff like that.

And another essential thing is the benefits. Why should I come to your University and not the next University? Why is that? Is it because your education is stellar and more critical than the other potential University looking at? Maybe you have a specialism that caters to you? Perhaps you have very, very good graduate schemes, where I may say, for example, if I want to go into banking and finance, you may have some relationship I don't know with KPMG in Dubai, excellent. That means my chances of a career path of succeeding are more possible now simply if I attend your University and not another university. And very quickly, the University of Manchester, you can see they've got a huge, huge picture. It's called a hero image to show you the success of previous years, as well as understanding precisely what you want to learn and even entering keywords. So I can see I can type in finance. It'll take me to a specific course, where I can read more about it. I can see what I need for levels and what's involved in the application process. And lastly, this the last one, I promise is, is a university called UA 92 which was opened up by a football called Gary Neville.

He's part of a class of 92 which is quite a well-known select few met a few footballers from 99 to two, obviously, and David back comes in one of the six. So it's David Beckham, Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs. And there are a few others. I'm not a massive football fan, but anyone who knows football will know who they are. He opened his University that looks explicitly at more modern education. And therefore, you can see that it's even more stylish, this, this, to me seems like it doesn't look like a university, if anything, it looks like an excellent, a cool shop or brand, where it just so happens that they seem to be teaching you things at the same time. You can get something out of it. So, you can see this kind of the same formula of impressing people when they come through your shop door. But the way you communicate has to match your tone of voice, which is formal yet relatable to young people.

Angelika Sharygina
I love this; thank you so much, Alex, for actually showing us the successful examples how to become how to create that online presence that will be relatable, and will be relatable to the younger audience, as well as, will remain very trustworthy and show the capacity of this particular University. It's incredible how you showed us different examples. And every University has its style. So it's interesting because this brand style of each University, it Do you think that this should be within everything on that website, every social. Also, social media.
Do you think they should be in one comprehensive brand, or should they vary and can be different?

Alex moss
I would say it would be good to remain consistent with your brand. So if you think you might need a brand refresh or a rebrand, change the logo, which I know is very hard to do. But it's even an update in messaging, which most have been able to do. So I can tell you now when I was going through those, those websites, they were not the same websites as they were ten years ago; there's a great website that you can visit called archive.org, where you can see any version of any web page from any moment in time. So it might be interesting for you to go to the University of Oxford and see what it's like today compared to what that website was like in 2005. And that may give you insight into how design methods change to the audience over time.

Angelika Sharygina
This is a very important topic that you've just mentioned. Because when students like to look at the website, they and the design is from 2005, then they think that okay, these guys are outdated, This is a bias. It doesn't mean this is the thing, but people who look at the website think, okay, you do not keep up with recent technologies with the design, with the online new trends. And this is how they see it.
Do you think this is vital for every single University across the world that wants to enhance its online presence and be more attractive to students to prospective students? Or do you think it's vital to keep up with new technologies and the latest designs and be out there?

Alex moss
100%. I mean, anyone who wants to think forward in the next ten years about their careers, things are moving fast, especially in technology. People want to stay in technology as well. I will go so far as to mention to anyone if they want to delve into web 3.0. Because that's something that is going to be the future whether or not we like it. You know, I'm kind of not old-fashioned. But you know, I want to get offline and get outside and have a walk and stuff. But you know, the generation beneath us. And it starts from the very people who will be applying to universities. Want to know more about what's going on in the metaverse and what NFT's are and, and things like that, where they get it going to get more immersive into technology? But the thing to think about here is that if they want to remain immersed in technology, they want to understand that whatever you're going to do is current. And suppose you've got an old website. In that case, they're not going to think that if you don't care about that, then what about your actual perspectives and syllabus of technology-based technology-based education in your University? It's kind of also if I go back to the shop from it's like going into a store that hasn't been refurbished in 20 years you walk around.

They may sell the best stuff ever in that store, but you still in the back of your head judging them and saying, well, why haven't you tried to impress me with, you know, getting new flooring, you know, it's that kind of stuff that you need to relate to and remember that these websites aren't for you. They're for the students. So, your opinion is biased, whether you like it or not. So they're not your website shouldn't be impressing the teachers, or the lecturers, or anyone in the admin or the owners of the University, they should only be impressing the people, you should be coming, potentially coming to the University to study. And that isn't you, it's someone else, and it's someone younger. So it would help if you impress them. It's like, again, if you're, if you're trying to impress a five-year-old kid, you're not going to give them adult-related content to try and impress them; you'll provide them with something that relates to them, right? So it's the same thing. And if they think you've missed the ball, or you're a bit of fashion, then you may, you may find trouble getting students, especially if they want to do anything modern in terms of their routes into work.

Angelika Sharygina
Thank you so much, Alex, because this is important stuff forever, University. We didn't go into details, but we covered the bare minimum for every institution across the globe that need to keep up and be relatable. And my last question is, do you believe that ranking systems should include the university webpages visibility and other online presence? And perhaps gamification, melons, there could be different methodology.

How this could be added to ranking systems? However, do you think this should be added as their innovation-centric approach towards the user, the users that will look up that University online?

Alex moss
Well, they are already. But without that content being there, it can't be found. So as I said before, this content and performance were split into two, right? So if you want to sell a particular course, you should write as much detail as possible about that course; the more you write, the more chance that that page will be chosen as the most relevant page when someone searches for something. So you have to think about what's in a prospective student's head when searching. And there are a few ways of thinking about that. So, there are things called branded search, where it would essentially be the name of the University itself. You may have an unbranded term where you may have something like University and then a location, or you might have that's called the medium tail. And then if you go longer tail to a more specific, I can say something like, I'm trying. I'm trying to study mechanics at Amman and University. And that's specific, right? But if I search for that, whoever's the University who has the University website of a man, right? They should have a particular landing page covering mechanics.

So it answers that person's question and gives them more trust that you're authoritative in that education sector, and therefore, they should come to you and ask more questions. And lastly, the performance of a website is very important. I know; before we went on, we chatted about technology and websites. And many universities in the MENA region may have slow-loading websites due to technologies like ASP that may be a bit more dated or less open source. And my answer is to make sure that you do go open source and make sure that you only load resources on your website that you need to pack. So the website loads as fast as possible. So you may, you may be the best University in the world. But if it takes 20 seconds for your web page to load, don't think that that person will wait for 20 seconds; you have to assume two things about any visitor on a website. A, They're impatient, and B, they're stupid. And if you do that, and you cater to an impatient, stupid person, then everyone else above will also be catered for. So, it's essential to think about that.

Angelika Sharygina
This was highly insightful. And thank you so much for sharing some secrets behind the success of every web page for each University. I know that lots of questions will be related to you. So there is a chat box. And please submit an inquiry. If you have a question for Alex and would like to consult with him on your issue with your institution's online presence, please submit the form here. And it was my great honor and pleasure to interview Alex moss today as a leader in the field of an online presence. Thank you so much, Alex, and it's been an absolute joy to talk to you about the importance of this online digital footprint for each of us. Thank you so much.

Alex moss
Thanks for having me at the conference, it was an honor.