The ecosystem audit serves the purpose of examining more than just the website itself. It was important to understand all of the moving parts that ensure the website meets its expectations.
In all, this audit aimed to review how all marketing efforts both online and offline can power a next generation TTU.edu and help boost enrollment overall.
In all, The Devoted interviewed over 30 staff members in small groups or individual sessions, we engaged in workshops with current students, experienced the in-person tour, and examined thousands of various web pages across TTU.edu. What we came away with for both students and TTU team members alike was a desire to reduce the content necessary in order to complete the task at hand.
Before the reorg of the marketing department, TTU.edu was owned and operated by the I.T. team. The website was used as a tool to provide hundreds of small websites that allowed each and every department to own and maintain their own content. What transpired was a lack of brand cohesion, duplicative information and a singular voice due to the varying levels of staff training and team sizes.
Over the years, this has caused the TTU.edu website to ballon to hundreds of thousands of pages - where it stands today. Due to its size, issues such as accessibility compliance, incorrect/outdated information, and design updates are extremely difficult and time-consuming.
Instead of recommending a "website redesign" as the solution to all of the issues, we wanted to provide a robust set of solutions that could support and maintain a next generation site for the future. Our recommendations can be broken down into the following segments:
Since the responsibility of the website has shifted to the marketing team, it was first important to examine how the website could become a proper marketing tool. Through our workshops, we identified over 10 audiences that are important to serve through the website but we specifically focused our efforts on undergraduate students. As a part of our research, we developed the Undergraduate Student Journey Map, that summarizes our findings.
A part of those findings were identifying the top three pieces of information a student is looking for while trying to identify the right school for them - Cost, Majors and Fit. In that order.
Reimagining the cost/tuition pages and framing it as "Affordability" would give students and parents a better feel about the investment in TTU. Creating program pages for all majors/minors at Texas Tech (like the online+ programs) is a fantastic way to keep the students attention. Finally, rethinking the on-campus tour, relaunching the virtual tour, and revising the campus social media strategy would help ease students along the journey to ultimately enroll.
As a part of an overall website overhaul, one of the most important tasks will be to reduce the overall content across all of TTU.edu. This process is already underway with the TTU web team but the extent of this work will need to happen on the College/School websites as well as the departmental websites.
Once the new TTU.edu is launched, it will be critical for the TTU.edu web team to implement a website governance model that maintains the new content strategy and restricts Content ROT (Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial). The current model allows for every department to "own" their respective websites, however for the next generation website it may be important for each department to collaborate with central marketing in order to maintain brand cohesion, the content strategy and accessibility standards.
During the audit and technology roadmap phase, we concluded that TTU should continue using the Omni CMS platform by Modern Campus. Although the system is several generations outdated, the CMS frustrations of TTU.edu are due to how it has been engineered over many years.
The TTU team is proficient in Omni CMS, and using the new version will provide many features and benefits. Like most modern content management systems today, The Devoted recommended building a global design system. This design system is completely custom, more robust, and provides many of the content types universities need in order to build a compelling marketing site.
The largest benefit is that the TTU.edu web marketing team will maintain a cohesive code base instead of hundreds of versions of the same template. Not only does this make it easier to push updates across campus, it enables the team to continue to make improvements at a lower cost and less time.
The Devoted reviewed several modern higher education websites for inspiration. Vanderbilt University's approach to design using an editorial mindset was received well in the presentation. The next generation TTU.edu should incorporate an editorial layout, which will help minimize content and make large swaths of information easier to read.
Even more important will be maintaining the standard of quality with designs and layouts across campus. Reoccurring trainings and a brand guidelines depot will be incredibly important to help keep the website fresh and within brand standards.
The next generation should be changed and edited constantly - because user behaviors change as well. Texas Tech's new website needs to have a refreshed data strategy to inform any changes that need to be made.
Google Analytics should have goals and funnels that mimic the customer journey map. All enrollment campaigns should be tagged and tracked to ensure the campaign is effective. The GA4 setup for TTU campus has been installed correctly but needs to be enhanced to include Key Goal tracking along with additional demographic tracking updates.
In the technology roadmap, it was revealed that there may also be several platforms used to handle campus visits, requests for information, etc. In some cases, the overlap could be eliminated and save Texas Tech money by consolidating or eliminating duplicative software.
