Website
We're here to provide the assistance and information you need to create and manage effective webpages on the Champlain.edu site and micro-sites.
The website is like the front door of the College. It’s often the first interaction that a potential student, community member, thought leader, or business has with Champlain College. And that experience will inform their first impression.
Webmaster Requests
If you’re in need a a simple revision to your webpages, we can help! Submit a webmaster request to enter your issue into our ticketing system. From there, it will be scheduled for work.
Submit a Webmaster TicketUser-Focused
When considering your webpages, think about your user, not just what you want them to know. Ask yourself:
- Who are my users?
- Are they current students or potential students?
- Are they guardians or school counselors?
- Where are they starting from?
- Are they starting from a search engine? Social media? A print piece with a QR code?
- What information are they seeking?
- What tasks are they trying to perform?
- What information do they NEED?
Your users’ needs should guide how you build your webpages while giving them the information you want them to know.
Scannable Pages
Although a lot has changed since the late 1990’s, online reading behavior has not. According to Nielsen Norman Group, users primarily scan a webpage looking for keywords that point them to the topics most pertinent to their current needs. Only 20 to 28% of users actually read a webpage and only when they are very interested in the topic.
For this reason, NN/g recommends the following writing guidelines for the web:
- highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
- meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
- bulleted lists
- one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
- the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion, making sure they know the most important information immediately in case they quickly leave the page
- half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
We’ve been saying this since 1997: People rarely read online — they’re far more likely to scan than read word for word. That’s one fundamental truth of online information-seeking behavior that hasn’t changed in 23 years and which has substantial implications for how we create digital content.
Data & Analytics
It can be tempting to include everything but the kitchen sink on your webpages. However, there’s no need to guess when it comes to who’s reading what on your site.
Analytics gives us actual data to show us the pages users are visiting, how long they stay there and where they go next.
SEO
It sounds technical, but in simple terms, search engine optimization (SEO) is about successfully getting your webpage in front of people when they do a search.
SEO is a combination of the
- meta description a user sees in a list of search results,
- real-world keywords that people search for on a regular basis, and
- headlines on your page that search engines use to assess what the page is about.
Office of Marketing
Location
Office Hours
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM