Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

First Impressions

  • By Shannon O'Connor
  • 06/01/18

College Planning & Management routinely features articles on the importance of the first impressions your campus makes on visitors and, in particular, potential students. When prospective students—and their parents—are shopping for where to spend their higher education dollars, what they see and experience when they first walk onto campus affects their choices. With this in mind, CP&M shares information from experts offering advice on creating appealing entry points, from signage to landscaping to building façades and more.

Your campus has another front door, however. I know, because I spend a fair amount of time on college and university campuses across the country… without leaving my office. How so? I visit your websites.

I routinely scan college and university websites in search of news stories and press releases for both our print and electronic publications. Upon landing, some of your websites offer sweeping drone-captured videos of expansive campus landscapes, while others show bold, eye-catching fonts, graphics, and appealing photography of students actively engaged in learning and college life. A few are a bit bare-boned, providing basic text, headlines, and a selection of menus and links. These are few and far between, however.

The first impression your institution’s website provides may be all it takes for potential students (or journalists) to linger, click through, and learn more, or go scouting for other schools. Research shows it takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about a website that determines whether they like the site and whether they’ll stay or leave, and that 38 percent of people will stop engaging with a website if they find the content or layout unattractive.

What message does your online “front door” deliver to first-time visitors? When was the design of your website last updated? How does it compare to those of other institutions that may be recruiting students who are also looking at your school?

There are a number of websites available—including the Web Design Degree Center, the Webby Awards, HubSpot, WebAward, and more—that profile or give honors to websites they consider the best. Those are good places to do some research to see how your website compares. Your website is your digital front door. If you make a winning first impression online, chances are you’ll increase the number of potential students who set foot on your campus.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management June 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • Stanford Completes Construction on Graduate School of Education Facility

    Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., recently announced the end of construction on a new home for its Graduate School of Education, according to a news release. The university partnered with McCarthy Building Companies on the 160,000-square-foot project, which involved two major renovations and one new construction effort.

  • LSU Breaks Ground on $200M Residential Project

    Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La., recently broke ground on a new residential complex, according to university news. The South Quad residential project will consist of two buildings and add a total of 1,266 beds for freshmen students. The development comes with a price tag of $200 million, and it’s scheduled to open to students in fall 2027.

  • Different Starting Points, Same End Goal

    Higher education campuses can enhance student experience by implementing mobile credentials to streamline building access, on-campus payments, and access to other amenities. This enables students to connect to their campuses through the technology they use most: their mobile devices.