1. Why digital?
A case for bringing us together online

2. Why should I care about digital?
In a word:
STUDENTS

3. In two words:
MORE
STUDENTS

4. In three words:
RETAIN
MORE
STUDENTS

5. What is digital?
Digital is
everywhere
we turn.

6. And nowadays, it is where
students turn first.

7. Digital is everywhere:
● It’s the way the world operates now.
Digital is horizontal
Organizations are still
vertical

8. The new paradigm is horizontal
● Communication is omni-directional and across all
demographics (grandmothers are on Facebook)
● Communication happens where it happens
(phones, tablets, etc.) and in multiple mediums,
channels, and demographics
● It is social, conversational, and raw – not cleansed
and curated
The old pair of dimes of one-directional
communication is no longer valid

9. Students are:
● Communicating with one another and with UALR in
the social sphere
● Creating reviews in Google
● Sharing experiences on and off campus
● Not subject to our vertical hierarchy
Are we listening and are we a part
of that conversation?
The new pair of dimes: face-to-face-to-face
communication, everywhere, all of the time.

10. What have we done about it?
● Establish a full-fledged digital team that knows about
content, code, design, data, social, and marketing
● One-on-one training
● Report findings
● Integrated analytics across all channels
● Monitor peers and competitors for benchmarking
● Optimized content for organic search success

11. Improving the online experience
Adopt
practices that:
Adopt
practices that:
Adopt practices
that will:
Adopt practices
that will:
• Find broken
student
experiences
• Make good
student
experience
behavior the norm
• Give organization
more sophisticated
toolkit for student
experience
• Create a
consistent
framework for
measure quality
• Share data
learnings across the
university
• Help organization
define experience
that is truly unique
by revealing unmet
student needs, reframing student
problems, and rethinking ecosystem
• Fix them
• Measure the
results
Adoption path courtesy of Ben Cooper

12. Insights across all channels

13. New tools for competitive analysis

14. Organic search = Free

15. What else are we doing about it?
● Student-centered redesign of the
homepage and other top-level sites
● Responsive design for mobile
● Using data to create personas and
navigational cues
● “Selfie-centered” marketing to engage
students on their devices
● Migrations and sustainability of websites

16. Redesign: Admissions site overhaul

17. Responsive: Mobile usage up 50%

18. Admissions usable on many devices

19. Marketing selfies: MyFuture@Work

21. The digital path
Funnel courtesy of Ben Cooper

22. Migrations: Moving to 2013

23. Why are we migrating?
● Better content
● Better organization of content
● Better promotion of YOUR content
● More functionality, flexibility, features
● More support

24. How can we help you?
● Training
● Digital strategy and tactics
● Social and marketing campaigns
● Site migrations
● Content promotion
● Analytics and insight

25. How do I get started?
Contact us at ualr.edu/digital/
Start the strategic process with Jennifer at
jcgodwin@ualr.edu
To receive the monthly digital report, please
add “monthly report” to the request at:
ualr.edu/digital/contact