There's more than one doorway to our websites. People come in through the garage, basement, window, chimney — well, you get the picture. Colleges are learning that their website user experience doesn't always start on their homepage. Sometimes the first web content people see is a blog post or a student handbook PDF or an inquiry form. Or is it? Actually, the user experience never starts on your website. The doorway to your site is … [Read more...]
Editorial Style for Inline Links
June 1, 2011 by
The power of the web is its ability to connect, or link, people with ideas and information. Inline links — links within a body of text — enhance usability and comprehension by enabling readers to find valuable information, made relevant by the surrounding content. However, links are not made valuable by "click here." Without an editorial plan for using inline links appropriately, your greatest usability asset can become … [Read more...]
The Bounce Rate Myth
May 25, 2011 by
For advanced web analytics users, bounce rate is quite possibly the most popular stand-alone metric — analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik suggests it’s the sexiest web metric ever. It's certainly at the top of my list. Google defines bounce rate as "the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page." It’s great because it tells you right away that something is wrong … [Read more...]
Higher Ed Takeaways From Confab 2011: The Content Strategy Conference
May 16, 2011 by
Last week Meet Content attended Confab: The Content Strategy Conference. We joined web content professionals from around the world to talk content and eat cake. (Seriously, our host Brain Traffic was not kidding when they said the days of content and cake were coming — the subsequent sugar highs were not just metaphorical.) To our delight, higher ed was well represented (check out our higher ed Confab Twitter list). In fact, organizers … [Read more...]
Themes From #meetcontent: Relationship Management and Content Strategy
May 9, 2011 by
Last Tuesday night, just over a month after we brought Meet Content to life, we brought Meet Content to IRL with our launch event, a panel entitled “Creating and Sustaining Higher Ed Web Content.” And the #meetcontent hashtag was hopping! Our outstanding panelists -- Boston University’s Nathaniel Boyle, Emerson College’s Mike Petroff, Tufts University’s Samantha Snitow and Wellesley College’s Charna Westervelt -- covered a range of topics … [Read more...]