When I ask higher ed web teams who their primary audience is, inevitably the answer is "prospective students." Makes sense, right? Since higher ed websites are such an important marketing tool, most people will agree prospective student is an appropriate primary audience. Yet, when you navigate college websites, how well does content speak to this audience? And what about other audiences? How do they fit in? The reality is we cater to … [Read more...]
Planning Content Goals With Web Stakeholder Interviews
In an earlier post, we talked about using focus groups to better understand your web users' needs. But external web users are not the only type of users we need to understand in order to create valuable and purposeful content. To create web content that works, we must also understand our internal web content stakeholders. These are all the people planning for, creating, curating, editing, approving, publishing and maintaining content, among … [Read more...]
Introducing Your Content: Page Titles and Headings
Last week, Georgy talked about the importance of headlines for introducing stories and enticing readers. But how do these lessons learned for headlines in news and featured content translate to other forms of content — such as admissions and academic webpages? Page titles and headings also play an important role for all content on our websites. Readers rely on page titles and headings to navigate websites and understand what is relevant and … [Read more...]
Clarity and Readability Checklist for Content Creators
Last week, Georgy talked about respecting our audiences with readable content, including options for testing readability. Wikipedia describes readability as "the ease in which text can be read and understood." In other words, do people get what you're saying? The definition of readability is straightforward enough, but how do you plan for clarity and readability? In particular, for content creators working on the front line, what … [Read more...]