Portals: How to give prospective students what they want — from CampusTechnology.com by Bridget McCrea
College recruits expect a lot from their prospective schools’ Web sites, but there are two critical pieces of information they demand from a campus portal–information that should be fairly simple to provide. Is yours delivering what your prospective students want? If not, you may be driving them away.
What if one out of every four prospective students quickly crossed your school off their list of potentials just because they had an unfavorable experience on your Web site? That would mean that 25 percent of your recruits would go elsewhere simply because they couldn’t find the right academic information on the site or because your Web presence wasn’t linked into their favorite social networking tool.
If the scenario sounds far-fetched, think again. According to a new survey conducted by the National Research Center for College & University Admissions (NRCCUA), educational consultancy Noel-Levitz, and content management solution provider OmniUpdate, 24 percent of students will overlook a school whose Web sites don’t meet expectations.