Dive Summary:
- Iowa's Graceland University may have lost web traffic when it pushed everything unrelated to recruitment off of its university website, but it ended up attracting more new applicants.
- The university realized that its homepage couldn't serve as the "front door for everything" after its athletics program set up an independent website powered by SIDHelp, and the school's next step was to move anything serving current students or faculty to an internal website called "My Graceland" and accessible with a network name and password.
- Where the site once lacked consistency due to the school's various departments assuming responsibility for various areas of the site, the new focus on the homepage is solely on prospective undergraduates, graduates, and online students--particularly with the "Project Success" marketing effort that spotlights "mini-stories" from current students and alumni about their Graceland experience.
From the article:
By turning its Web site into a recruitment tool, this small university lost traffic and gained applicants. For an institution of just under 2,300 students with a tiny Web site staff, Graceland University's approach to managing site content was typical of many small universities: Put in place a content management system (CMS) and delegate. ...