Your website is the front door to your institution. It’s one of the first places your prospective students visit and serves as an important touchpoint in their enrollment decision.
That's why your website has to be both attractive and informative.
It must share the very best of what your institution has to offer in an easily navigable way.
A well-designed, functional website will help you engage current students, attract prospective ones, connect with alumni and inform families all at once. It's your primary window to market school events, display course offerings and showcase campus life.
We recently explored a number of websites for a range of institutions to see what was working for them and how they represented their brand. We've listed them below in no particular order. They all stand out for reasons unique to them.
If you want to learn how to design and build a higher ed website that meets your prospective students’ expectations, download our quick guide, Anatomy of a Purpose-Built College Website.
Students generally attend college to achieve career goals. They understand college is an investment and expect a good ROI from it. In fact, 65% of high school students expect to gain specific skills for the workplace; 49% expect a job offer upon graduation according to a 2023 RNL study.
Displaying career pathways and employment data alongside the programs is the best way to showcase the ROI. University of Arkansas Monticello does exactly that.
Their website shows live career data on all their program pages with embedded application buttons. This helps prospective students easily see the ROI of their programs without having to dig for it. We call that a practical next-gen website.
One of the primary purposes of a college website is to attract prospective students and move them through the application funnel. Ferris State University is acing it by racing them through, seeing a 2800% increase in click through rates.
Ferris State understands Gen Z students are digital natives who grew up using smartphones, watching Netflix and online shopping. They expect similarly personalized experiences from college and university websites. One in five 10th-grade and first-generation students said they don't find higher ed websites helpful.
Ferris State has taken marketing to a whole new level with personalization, displaying specific calls to action based on each student’s application status. It ensures that website visitors quickly find relevant information and are guided to take the expected next steps.
According to a 2023 RNL study, almost half of high school students participate in virtual tours of colleges and universities. 68% of them sign up for a virtual tour via the college website.
Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) clearly understands the value of virtual tours. It provides state-of-the-art virtual tours of its beautiful campus to website visitors. The tours keep visitors’ interest piqued so they want to spend more time looking at various offerings on their website.
OWU’s Maps and Virtual Tours make the university’s website highly engaging. Visitors spend more than double the time exploring these virtual tools than the website’s average, according to Doug Thompson, manager of web and electronic communications.
SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, the only teaching hospital in Brooklyn, is a unique school. And has a website to match. Students and patients visit the site looking for information about courses and treatments.
Multiple departments leverage the website to publish informative content targeted at prospective students. And they do so without hampering the patients’ website experience.
How? With a blog.
They publish diverse content on their blog, which they highlight on the website’s homepage. Prospective students can visit the blog, filter it by the area/department they're interested in—ex: pediatric cardiovascular medicine, transplant or a different type of surgery—and see the latest updates from that department.
Also, these posts are fresh, SEO content that help increase the volume of qualified organic traffic to the website. With topics that are timely, buzzworthy and engaging, we call that the SEO jackpot.
If you need inspiration for a stunning higher ed web design, visit Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ website. In fact, the university won multiple awards for their web design by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
The simple interface, bold images and conversational call-outs make this the gold standard for website design. It doesn't just look pretty but is also easy to navigate and highlights its top attributes for prospective students: the appealing, walkable campus, wealth of programs and engaging on-campus activities.
FAMU invested in a total website redesign in 2022 and it paid off. Ranked the #1 Public HBCU in the country in 2022, the ROI is clear: they've experienced a nearly 8% increase in first year retention. Check out the attractive graphics, embedded videos and simple text.
You want to tell your prospective students why they should join your institution. Highlighting your unique selling point right on your home page is always good practice.
Alvin Community College is abuzz with activity throughout the year. Their homepage highlights feature events on an easy-to-access calendar, so you always know what’s going on across campus. You can add an event to your own calendar with the click of a button. Sign us up for the next Music Academy!
Easy navigation is a key component of a functional website design. University websites generally cater to multiple personas. Delivering relevant content to each visitor becomes crucial for delivering a great user experience.
UNT’s simple navigation bar is designated by persona, which makes it easy for students, faculty, alumni or parents to quickly find what they need.
With a search bar right on the homepage, an accordion style hero image and the visually appealing ticker graphic, any visitor can find exactly what they need.
Designing, building and maintaining university and college websites is not an easy task. Audiences can range from prospective and current students to faculty, researchers, student families, alumni, funders and policymakers. Moreover, universities and colleges often have numerous departments and administrative units, each with their own objectives.
Download our quick guide Anatomy of a Purpose-Built College Website to learn how to design and build a higher ed website that meets your prospective students’ expectations.
Last updated: January 11, 2023