Edu-leaders

Eleven years into the new millennium and we’re certain our readers do not need to be convinced about the need for well-planned web presence via your institution’s own website. Unfortunately, all websites aren’t created equal, and so while they may all look similar, you fundamentally have three kinds of websites – bad, good and effective.

The bad ones are easy to recognise – often ugly, they hurt your eyes and are a nightmare to navigate, and more often than not, send visitors away irritated and confused. A good website, on the other hand, has, at first glance, everything you think you need – professional appearance, sensible navigation and good content. What makes a website truly shine and be effective is when it anticipates the needs of the customer/visitor and meets them. If you can liken a good website to a static electronic version of your institution’s brochure that merely ‘sells’ your institution, an effective website goes that one step further to inform, engage and convert your audience. Ready to go that extra step with your website? We spoke to leading solution providers and institutions to look at the important considerations and choices you have to make.

Tangible Benefits
The benefits each institution derives from an effective website are largely translatable across the education landscape. For instance, at Manipal University, each of the three pronged objectives – information reach, student engagement and online applications – saw significant improvements with the website launch, according to Satish Kamath, Head of IT, Manipal University. In addition, with the strong focus on the external target group by way of user generated content initiatives around the ‘Life in Manipal’ theme, the institute has not only seen measurable growth in positive brand association, but also an increase in international online applications and enquiries. Prospective students and their parents can log onto the respective institute’s website, evaluate their eligibility conditions online and even discuss their concerns and clarifications with guidance counsellors via live chat.

Apart from the increased ability to reach students across state and national boundaries, there are benefits of transparency to be derived from a well intentioned website. At Amity, for example, processes that relate to admissions, attendance, placements are available via the website, enabling not only students to manage their academic lifecycle but also giving parents direct access to monitor their wards’ performance throughout the academic calendar. KN Senthil Kumar, Vice President, AKC Datasystems (a company under the Amity Group) says that over the 12-year history of their website, they have added features that greatly enhance the experience for audiences external to Amity as well. He highlights the Online Certificate Verifying System (OCVS), which facilitates recruiters by allowing them to check the authenticity of the degree of Amity student by merely entering his/her roll number. In addition, with every workshop, seminar and conference published via the website and publicised via social media, a recruiter or a prospective student can easily get a glimpse into the academic rigour of the institute. And above all other reasons, a website is the only channel that is truly 24x7x365.

In-House or Outsourced?
For many universities and institutes, such as the Amity, Manipal and LPU, the decision to maintain an in-house IT/web team that is responsible for the continuous upkeep of their web infrastructure was a simple decision. For smaller institutes who lack a dedicated staff budget for a web team, it may be wise to contract the services of one of the many web design and maintenance providers that dot the landscape. Bear in mind some key selection criteria, and don’t necessarily get swayed by low-cost providers that are abundantly present across the country. Insist on previous experience with education clients, if possible and ask to see their portfolio with previous websites. Remember that a website is rarely a one-time activity, and ask to see what the long term costs (and continuity measures in place) of a maintenance contract would work out to before you close the deal with a service provider.

The Key Components
Domain Registration: Probably the most commoditised of your choices, domain names can cost you anything between $8-15 (Rs 360-675) per year, and are usually bundled along with a hosting plan for free. Bear in mind the fact that your web identity is intimately tied to your overall brand strategy, so choose wisely while picking that ‘.edu’ domain. Too long and you’ll tire your audience out just typing your address in the browser; too short and it could be too cryptic for anyone to understand.

Web Hosting: Your website will need a home on the internet, and a reliable web host is critical. Digging the bottom of the barrel to choose a cheap web host may have severe consequences in terms of uptime, so go with the larger US providers like DreamHost, 1&1, etc. You could choose web hosts with servers based in India if your traffic/audience is primarily Indian, but bear in mind that web hosting in India is prohibitively priced, especially when compared to offerings in the US. Hosting charges can vary between $8 and $25 a month, based on what kind of server you’re looking to rent (dedicated servers are costlier) and the traffic/bandwidth you expect your website to experience. If you’re willing to pay for a year’s worth of hosting in advance, you’re likely to snag a better deal from the web host.

Technology Platform: Unlike a decade ago, very few sites these days rely solely on a small number of HTML pages cobbled together by hand. With the advent and rapid proliferation of Content Management Systems (CMS), there is no reason why you should deny your audience rich and highly interactive websites. But what is a CMS, you ask? Put simply, a CMS is a web application that uses a database to store your content, and serves up this rendered content on the fly based on what your user requests in his browser. The primary reason to go the CMS route is to make creating and editing of content simple and easy so that the task of maintaining your website’s content is not limited to a few tech-savvy staff and students, and can be distributed among larger sections of your administration and students. Invest some time with your core web team to research the various options – you would do well to consider a CMS that installs easily, has a simple administration interface, has a wide and supportive user community, and has a wide variety of plug-ins and extensions to extend the functionality of the CMS to cover a feature you need. CMS such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and Radiant are great places to start, but conduct your own due diligence before you settle on one of these. Each of these CMSes are free (some of the plug-ins may cost you extra) and can be taken out for a test-drive before you commit to them.
(Read more at http://www.inc.com/guides/choose-website-content-managementsystem.html)

How to Go About It
Like any big IT project, more so because it is consumer facing, building your own website (or redesigning it to be effective) is as much planning as it is execution. It begins with understanding the customer, says Kamath from Manipal. He adds that as a university, the website is not meant to merely cater to prospective students and admissions – that approach is too narrow. The audience of your website includes existing students (info about course/classes, attendance, results, etc.), faculty (info about published research), alumni (event updates) and the influencer community which includes parents, industry, international students etc. Each of these target groups has to be kept in mind when drawing a feature functionality-map, and Kamath recommends a competition benchmarking exercise to evaluate what global education players are offering, before you start charting out your own customised website plan. It would also be a good idea to start looking at the technology platform – the right balance of features such as CMS, social integration and e-commerce need to be part of your plan from Day 1.

Information design and navigation elements are next, not to forget involving your existing marketing communications and branding teams to leverage your existing marketing collateral and visual identity. It is crucial to remember that some of your biggest assets at this point are within your own institute – harness the enthusiasm and talents of your students.

If an in-house IT team is not a feasible alternative, and you plan on getting the initiative outsourced, we’d recommend that you get the right folks from the faculty involved in the core team as well, before you approach a web design firm for a bid. At this point, keep in mind that this project, like your other IT engagements, should be consultative in nature, and that website needs and requirements for even similar sized institutions can vary. Souvik Das Gupta, Co-founder of Miraj, a web design studio in New Delhi, cautions institutions against considering the web design component as a commodity. Unlike the hosting and domain name components, web design initiatives cannot be expected to have a fixed market cost from the word ‘go’. Apart from the inevitable scope that comes up with most clients, Souvik opines that the cost for designing varies with every design company, with some companies billing for the actual effort whereas others have evolved a fixed price model.

You may ask: What is an institution to do in the face of such uncertainty? Souvik recommends all clients analyse their return on investment (RoI) equation first and start with a budget, both in terms of time and cost, and work with a design partner with these numbers on the table. He adds that his firm asks clients to answer four questions – essentially around describing the project, your intended target audience, expectations from users of your website and time/budget constraints – that make the strategies clearer and lead to a more fruitful engagement for both the web design firm and the institution.

Kunal Dua, Co-founder of Random Loops, another web design firm in New Delhi, provides some ballpark estimates – institutions looking for a basic CMS-based site with a planned effort of about 4-5 weeks should budget for an outflow, not including long-term maintenance, of anywhere between Rs 1-2 lakh. Of course, a more complex site with events, admissions and forums, etc., would add significantly to this estimate. At the end of the day, our advice would be to think of it not in terms of how much of the IT budget you will have to realign, but the increased brand value and enrolments that a well-designed website can bring. A website is a long-term commitment with the web property, and post launch, you will need a continuous improvement cycle in place to regularly review the content and features to keep the site relevant for an ever-evolving audience. Social network integration, sharing user generated content across platforms and engaging in online events are just some of the next steps you could consider to stay relevant and the institution of choice in your target group’s mind.

We recommend starting with these galleries of web design and effective academic websites: http://bit.ly/rghHUT and http://bit.ly/nfHTR0.