FEmarketing speaking at College Marketing Network Conference
FEmarketing.co.uk are delighted to announce we will be hosting two workshops at the College Marketing Network Conference on Monday 23rd November in Coventry:
Marketing To School Leavers Online: 7 Website Mistakes Colleges Are Making (Monday 23rd November at 10.15)
As one Marketing Manager has stated to FEmarketing “Our College’s website is critical to achieving our marketing objectives if we have to reduce our offline marketing spend”
FEmarketing have undertaken extensive research with Year 11 pupils to find out what content they look for on FE College websites when assessing further education options and what they ignore. Their feedback may surprise you…
In the workshop we will share the results and outline the 7 biggest website mistakes colleges are making online when marketing their college to school leavers.
7 Reasons Why Your College Website May NOT Be Engaging Employers (Monday 23rd November at 11.45)
In the current economic climate FE Colleges must understand how employers are using Google to research, evaluate and select training organisations for staff development.
Research by FEmarketing.co.uk has identified how college websites can be overlooked by employers because they lack the content and credibility that employers are looking for when researching training providers on Google.
Based on feedback from employers this session will share seven of the biggest reasons why your College’s website may not be engaging as many employers as it could be…
FE College Homepage Design Best Practice Report Launched…
FEmarketing are delighted to announce the publication of the FE College Homepage Best Practice Report.
FEmarketing’s homepage best practice report shows you practical guidelines to improve your homepage without a costly redesign:
- 46 examples of FE college homepages to benchmark against…
- 579 screenshots and examples of best practice from FE college home pages…
- 24 home page best practice factors to help you improve your user’s experience…
- Feedback from prospective full time learners, part time learners and employers on what they look for on college home pages…
- Answers to the 40 most frequently asked questions by FE college Marketing Managers and Web Developers about home page design
Have a look at the exclusive packages we have put together to coincide with the launch..
Get Feedback From School Leavers On Your Web Content
When was the last time that you asked school leavers or Year 11 learners what they think about your college’s website content?
Over the coming months whilst your colleagues are promoting your college to schools we strongly recommend that you take the opportunity to ask your prospective full-time learners for their feedback on your college’s website.
One of the most valuable parts of the FE College Website Best Practice Project was to ask Year 11 learners to visit FE and Sixth Form college websites.
We asked the participants to think of a qualification or vocational course they would like to pursue and to assess how effective the various college websites were in:
- Providing the relevant course information
- Promoting the benefits of studying at college
- Outlining the next steps should they wish to either request further information or to enrol
Although many colleges have told us they do actively seek feedback from school leavers, too many rely solely on feedback based on printouts of web content.
The key, in our opinion, is to observe school leavers as they sit in front of the PC and navigate your college’s website.
If you have ever agonised or argued with your colleagues about what content or images should appear on your college’s website then watching how your target audience navigates your site can offer you invaluable feedback.
Here’s some tips to how to set up your own feedback session:
- Identify the website content you would like to evaluate and your target audience
- Decide where you would like to run the feedback sessions – at your college or a school
- Decide on the ideal size of user group (5 participants should give you significant feedback)
- Ask for willing volunteers who are willing to participant (30 minutes of their time to navigate site and offer feedback)
- Set them a specific task so you can observe their activities
- Ask the participants to oultine what they are doing and why (and also give feedback on the content / images of pages navigating)
If you are doing this at your college or on site using college laptops then you can always use screen capture software to record your participants movements or feedback.
You will be amazed at the feedback you will receive.
More importantly it can make you realise what a waste of time it is to spend hours in meetings arguing about content ideas when you can go directly to your target audience and gain a clear understanding of what they like and what they ignore
Have a look at what school leavers told us about FE College websites…