Blackbaud K-12 User Conference Breakout Sessions Rock Your School's Website - Stacy Jagodowski & Peter Baron, Cheshire Academy & Blackbaud

2. Rock Your School’s Website:
Lessons from 3,000 Independent Schools
#BBK12UC

3. Peter Baron
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Blackbaud K-12
@peterdbaron
Stacy Jagodowski
Director of Strategic
Marketing & Communications
Cheshire Academy
@stacyjago
Meet Your Presenters
#BBK12UC

4. What will we cover?
1. What is web usability? Plus a case study.
2. Research Report: Higher Education Navigation Trends
3. A peek into the findings (with extra attention paid to
responsive web design) & recommendations from
Cheshire Academy!

5. 125 124 slides in 60 minutes...
Ready. Set. Go!

6. What do I mean
by web usability?

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_usability
“Web usability is the ease of use of a
website. Some broad goals of usability
are the presentation of information and
choices in a clear and concise way, a
lack of ambiguity and the placement of important
items in appropriate areas.

8. How can we ensure
a good user experience?

10. Evaluating
Navigation

11. Simplify
organize
Be creative
Support SEO

12. The many looks of Cheshire Academy’s Navigation ...

13. Apply Learn Live
Create Play Compete
Support Connect
Inform CA Today
Brainstorm Nav Ideas!

15. Optimal
Workshop
Card Sort
Exercise
See how
users sort
info.

16. Optimal
Workshop
Card Sort
Exercise

18. Optimal Workshop
Tree Jacking Exercise
Test #1
You are looking for the school’s
mission statement.

19. Optimal Workshop Tree Jacking Exercise
find the Mission Statement
traditional NavCall to Action Nav

20. Optimal Workshop Tree Jacking Exercise
find the Mission Statement
Call to Action Nav
traditional Nav

21. The Final Product

22. But how can we assess how
schools are approaching web
usability & site navigation?

23. Stewart Foss
eduStyle

25. “The research report on higher-ed navigation
trends, gives colleges and universities a brand
new tool that can be used to evaluate their
website navigation against industry standard
practices. This report, used in combination with
other tools, enables institutions to give their users
the best possible experience online.”

28. Free Report!
Download your copy!
https://hello.blackbaud.com/Private_School_Digital_Insight_2015.html

29. 2925 sites measured!

30. Common navigation terms
phone numbers
addresses
# of menus on a pagevideos
html & css versions
locations on a page
blogs
What did we track?
social profiles/badges
# of URLs on a page

32. School Type, Religious Affiliation,
Grade Level, State/Region, etc.

34. 1. Homepage Overview
2. Responsive Web Design
3. Navigation
4. Social Media
5. SEO

38. Homepage
Design

39. Target Audience
Promote Signature Programs
Strategic Plan/Mission
Aesthetics/Widgets

40. Wayback Machine Lets you view
past Versions of your site

41. Cheshire Academy Homepage Design
Find
Inspiration

43. Our Design Process …
We worked closely with our
designer to achieve the ideal
homepage for our community of
users
Work closely with your designers.

44. Test, revise, re-test, revise. Repeat as needed.

45. Launched
August 2014

46. Revised &
Enhanced
Spring 2015

47. Calls to Action on Every Page
Branded login button
Instead of just one full width
photo, we did five photos for
greater coverage of offerings
Let’s look at our choices for
homepage design elements

48. NEW!

50. How do we compare to other
independent school sites?
X

52. 1940 1965 1985 2005
The major trends in computing
Mark Weiser
Mainframes (many:one)
Personal Computers (one:one)
Ubiquitous Computing (one:many)
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/NomadicInteractive/sld003.htm
http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com/weiser/UbiHome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing
1988

53. What are we seeing?
13%
1
1
%
7
6
%
Source: AUG 2013 total page requests
served from WhippleHill servers.

58. http://www.nd.edu

61. Of course, but how?

63. Too many choices ...

64. Responsive web design
• Phrase coined in 2010. Emerged in 2012.
• A cost-effective alternative to mobile apps.
• Utilizing HTML and CSS3.

65. • Fluid Grid: graceful degrading of layout across
devices and device orientation.
• Media Queries: a media query allows us to
target not only certain device classes, but to
actually inspect the physical characteristics of the
device rendering our work.
Responsive web design

71. Is your site responsive?

72. RWD takeaways!

73. Search

75. Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3035856/hit-the-
ground-running/why-were-more-likely-to-remember-
content-with-images-and-video-infogr
Visuals

76. Visuals

77. Behind the Password

78. Responsive
Strategy

79. Improve Mobile/Tablet Experience
Take advantage of Mobile Options
Find inspiration for RWD
Kill the “Academy App”

81. Out with
the old ...

82. … in with
the
responsive
Web
Design

88. Navigation takeaways!

89. Add calls to action!

90. In a multi-screen world, how does
my navigation display?

92. Calls to Action
& Navigation

93. Remember our Navigation Fiasco?
Apply Learn Live
Create Play/Compete
Support Connect

94. Apply
Inquire
Give
Talk to us

95. But that’s not all!

100. Social media takeaways!

101. Source:
http://www.pewinternet.
org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/

102. Add social media badges!

103. Social Media
Implementation

104. Add main accounts to Homepage
Highlight social streams within the site
Add to all internal pages
Utilize Keywords

107. #Academylibrary
Use #feeds to
share department
specific content
from a master
account.

108. Create a
Mashup Page
to house all
your social
media efforts

111. SEO takeaways!

112. 95% of schools use <title> tags, but
are they being customized?

114. 57% of schools use meta descriptions.

115. Meta descriptions are your sales pitch!

116. 81% of schools use the <alt> attribute

117. 81% of schools use the <alt> attribute

118. Search Engine
Optimization

119. Keyword Choices
Page Titles & Meta
Optimize Content
SEM Campaign

120. Create a master Keyword
List that meets your
marketing goals
Google Adwords
offers a Keyword
planner tool
Use spyfu.com to
see what peers
are doing

121. Content
management
systems like
WhippleHill often
have built-in in
meta support.
Use your Keyword
list to drive how
you fill this out.

123. Download your copy!
https://hello.blackbaud.com/Private_School_Digital_Insight_2015.html

124. Peter Baron
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Blackbaud K-12
@peterdbaron
Stacy Jagodowski
Director of Strategic
Marketing & Communications
Cheshire Academy
@stacyjago
stacy.jago@cheshireacademy.org
Meet Your Presenters