The NYTimes has a short piece on effective practices for college web sites.
The key points:
- Information on academic programs should be prominent and seek to not only describe content, but to answer student questions about time, costs, etc.
- Financial aid calculators are very popular with students
- Students like video, but only if load-times are quick and no additional plug-ins are required (i.e. use Flash video)
- The high-school students targeted by college sites were not all that interested in news and announcements… I wonder if that would be the same for our applications ( i.e. grads)
- Colleges are making greater use of Facebook and Twitter to interact with students
