Consider Attending #casesmc

2012 brings the third annual CASE Social Media and Community Conference. I’ve never attended this conference but I remember reading some tweets from San Francisco in 2011. In fact, I think I first heard about #casesmc via social media from @rachelreuben. That was back before I met her live and in person.

In case you’ve missed the build of 2012 tweets about #casesmc, I’m super thrilled to announce that, this year, I’m serving as the conference chair.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working with Jen Lichty at CASE to identify faculty and speakers for this event. I’m pretty excited about the program we’ve put together. It starts with a Social Media 101 pre-conference workshop designed to orient social media newbies just in time for the conference that follows. We are very lucky to have Patrick Powers leading the workshop. If you need a knowledge base about social media, you can rely on Patrick to deliver. He’s sure to be awesome.

The conference gets underway mid-day on April 18 with sessions and keynotes that will be varied, on point, and useful. (I promise to do my best on that commitment!) The full program with session titles and descriptions is on the conference website. Along with me, the mStoner contingent at #casesmc will include Michael Stoner. Here is a bit about the presentations Michael and I will offer:

From Michael

• Succeeding with Social Media (co-presented with Cheryl Slover-Linett, Slover Linett Strategies): In this session, we’ll look at what we learned in our third year of conducting the CASE/mStoner/Slover Linett survey on social media in advancement. What’s changed—and what has stayed the same? How have schools, colleges, and universities responded to external demands for stronger, more engaging social channels? How have staffing, management, and policies shifted internally to keep up with these needs? We’ll explore these and other findings. This year, we focused more sharply on success, probing on particular tools, practices and tactics of social media that help institutions to achieve successful outcomes. We’ll look at what our data reveals about the characteristics of successful campaigns and institutions on social media.


• Social Media and the President: Today, social media is pervasive. Not only are presidents expected to communicate with important constituents through social tools like Facebook and Twitter, but many recognize them as channels that allow them to amplify their messages. This session offers ideas on how presidents can maximize their use of social media—and why social channels are an important component of today’s communications mix.

From Susan

• What do I say? Some content ideas for your social media channels.: It bears repeating, content is king. If you are just getting started with a social media channel, it can be daunting to figure out what to say. Even those of us who have been doing this for a while experience an occasional dry spell or suffer through good, old-fashioned writer’s block. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned pro, coming up with good stuff to use on your institution’s social media channels is sometimes challenging. This session will present a few (many!) suggestions.


• Connect Your Own Dots: Social Media Integration as a Best Practice for Marketing and Communications (co-presented with Nyleva Corely, UT Austin): Your audiences experience your brand and hear from you through a long list of social media and non-social media channels and you shouldn’t expect them to connect the dots. You need to develop an institutional plan that will allow you to stay on message across multiple communication channels using everything from social media aggregators to editorial calendars to social media campaigns. Not only that, a social media strategy isolated from your broader communication strategy is a risk. We’ll share specifics and demonstrate best practices through case studies from educational institutions.


It’s not too early to register for this Chicago event to be held on April 18 – 20. And, while you’re looking at the 2012 #casesmc website, check out the list of faculty and speakers. I think we’ve pulled together some of the most experienced and expert thought leaders within the social media discipline. I hope you agree. What a Tweet up this will be!

Just in case you’re not convinced, here are, straight from the CASE website, the official benefits of attending. These bullet points work well for the request-to-attend email you might need to send to your boss:

• For the social media novice, you’ll receive a practical orientation to the most widely used social media platforms. Get comfortable getting started.


• For the more experienced social media professional, you’ll engage (face-to-face) with respected educational leaders and be inspired by some of our advanced sessions.


• We’ll discuss the results of the third CASE/mStoner/Slover-Linnett survey on the use of social media in advancement.


• You’ll discover how educational institutions are tracking, assessing, and evaluating the effectiveness of social media channels.

Did you plan to get more social in 2012? Are you deciding now which conferences you’ll attend this year? Then join us at #casesmc in Chicago.

Posted by Susan Evans
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Farewell to 2011—A banner year for mStoner

All told, 2011 was quite a year for mStoner. Here’s what I mean:

• The tenth anniversary of our founding.


• Our most successful year financially, ever.


• Exciting new projects that allowed us to expand the range of services we provide.


• New staff members who brought new energy and experience to our team.


• Major initiatives toward our ongoing commitment to share what we learn with our colleagues on campuses around the world.

I want to bid farewell to this banner year by calling out some highlights.

Happy birthday to us

I’m still a bit stunned by the fact that we celebrated our first decade in business in November.

Ten years: it’s hard to believe! We’ve grown a lot since early November 2001 when Voltaire and I stared at each other across the office we’d rented in an old factory not far from Wrigley Field and wondered what came next.

Here’s what happened, in brief: mStoner grew; we acquired our long-time technical partner, Global Image; we recruited an amazingly talented team; and we’ve worked for some of the best clients any agency could wish for.

I’d like to thank our smart, hardworking, and dedicated staff who are key to our success. I’m constantly amazed by my talented colleagues and the insights and energy they bring to our work. While it’s always bittersweet when valued colleagues leave, we added some new staff members last year—and they bring some exciting new talent and experience to us and our clients.

An institution’s website is its virtual campus—one of the most important representations of institutional life. As I look back over our first decade, I’m humbled by the number of institutions who have invited us to work with them on this most important element of their marketing, recruiting, advancement, business and learning/teaching presence. We’re often told by clients (and prospective clients) that we’re the best in the country at what we do. I don’t believe that it’s arrogant to say that I pretty much agree. Still, we learn a great deal from our clients and I want to thank the many great people we’ve worked with over the last decade: far too many to list in this post.

Clients and client work in 2011

This year, we launched websites for eleven institutions: Clarkson University, Elizabethtown College, Mount Mercy University, Alverno College, Middlesex School, Waubonsee Community College, Connecticut College, Trinity College, Loyola University Chicago Undergrad Admissions, and The University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. And we implemented these sites on an interesting mix of content management tools, including HannonHill Cascade Server, OmniUpdate, Drupal, Terminal 4, and WordPress.

Of course, it’s no longer good enough to have a great website (though that’s more essential than ever). With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels, the web is a lot bigger than it used to be. You may know that we work with CASE and Slover Linett Strategies on a survey of social media in advancement, which explores how institutions around the world use and manage these essential engagement channels. This was the second year of our survey (here’s where you can learn about our findings).

Not surprisingly, our clients recognize that social media should be tightly integrated into their advancement activities and other aspects of campus life. In 2011, we developed social media strategies for New Mexico State University, Kenyon College, the Ensworth School, and Alverno College.

Another big theme this year was mobile: we designed mobile sites for ten institutions. Three of them are live (at Trinity College, UIC, and Loyola University). The rest are in production or nearly ready to launch.

Although we’ve built our reputation on our websites and online work, we work in other media, too:

• We worked on a branding strategy and a visual identity system for the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (the Hofstra Law website will launch in 2012);


• We created videos and two beautiful viewbooks for The Ensworth School;


• We collaborated with the College of William & Mary on development of the innovative Ampersandbox (print and web) student recruitment campaign.

New colleagues
As some of our team members moved on to other opportunities, we were able to bring a number of talented newcomers to our team. Note that while these folks are new to mStoner, they have extensive experience in their fields:

• We got to know Susan Evans first as our client at the College of William & Mary and when a position opened up for a senior strategist, it was a no-brainer to hire her. Susan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to mStoner—and to the clients she serves.


• Anne Glista joined us in October as a designer. She’s worked on projects for Widener University and Oakton Community College and has contributed a lot to the design of our new initiative, EDUniverse (see below for more).


• Kate Smith joined us in September as our controller. Already she’s made a huge difference to us by helping us rethink how we manage our business. Internally, we call her “Dr. No” because it’s her job to keep us running efficiently and profitably, which means saying no to everyone at some point. (In a good way, though.)


• Finally, Mallory Wood came aboard as our marketing manager in August. She’s responsible for our external presence, managing our blog and website, reviving our Intelligence email newsletter (you can subscribe here) and helping us to connect more effectively with the community we serve. We’ve already seen Mallory’s talents in action in many situations, but perhaps most memorably (so far) in planning the announcement and launch of EDUniverse.

Community service
Early in 2011, we began developing a major initiative that we announced at our anniversary celebration in Chicago. If you haven’t heard about EDuniverse, here’s the short version:

Find inspiration, learn how others have solved problems, and network with other .edu professionals at EDUniverse, the hub for education’s freshest ideas and latest content. Anyone can easily access and contribute resources like presentations, white papers, blog posts, and more. Create a profile to share your content and generate dialog by liking and adding to the discussion. EDUniverse strengthens education and provides resources to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing, web development, social media, and related topics.

You can learn more and and join the nearly 600 others who’ve signed up for notification when EDUniverse launches. And if you’re in Cambridge and don’t have plans for 24 February, join us at SCVNGR headquarters for our launch party (but please let us know you’re coming first!).

EDUniverse is a larger and more complex manifestation of our long-term commitment to contribute knowledge and share what we learn in our consulting practice with our colleagues in higher ed. We celebrated eight years of blogging at mStonerblog in 2011. And Susan, Mallory, Kevin Zink, Doug Gapinski, Mark Sheehy, and I presented at various conferences: HighEdWeb, CASE Social Media, CASE Summit, AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and others.

The year ahead
In bidding farewell to 2011, I also want to welcome 2012. We’re starting the year with a plethora of fascinating new projects for some new clients. Here are just a few glimpses of what lies ahead for us:

• relaunching mStoner.com and mStonerblog.com;


• Working with the Office of the President at Columbia University on a new initiative;


• developing new websites for Whittier College, Widener University, Webster University, Drake University, Miami University, UC Hastings College of the Law, and the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management;


• creating a social media strategy for The Pingry School;


• working with the communications staff at Georgia Tech do develop a strategy for recreating GaTech.edu;


• welcoming new staff members Monica-Lisa Mills and Fran Zablocki.

We’re excited about these projects—and others to come! And very pleased to welcome our new colleagues. Best wishes to you for a great 2012: and if mStoner can help your institution be more effective at recruiting students, engaging alumni, highlighting research, or achieving other institutional goals, please let us know.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Introducing Monica-Lisa Mills

I’m thrilled to announce that Monica-Lisa Mills has joined our team as a project manager, starting today.

Monica-Lisa comes to us with a long track record of success as a strategist, organizer, troubleshooter, manager, and negotiator. Her background includes a great deal of experience in:

• IT and design project management
  
• process development
  
• Agile-inspired methodologies
  
• CRM and CMS implementations and installations
  
• user training and quality assurance
  

She’s worked for both large and small companies, as well as with nonprofits and organizations with a social mission. She’s been both a technical trainer for teachers and as a secondary school teacher. You can read more about Monica-Lisa on her LinkedIn profile.

Monica-Lisa’s personal interests-as wide-ranging as her skills-include religion, visual and performing art, and traditional unaccompanied singing. She holds a BFA in theater from North Carolina School of the Arts and an MDiv in theology from Episcopal Divinity School.

As Susan explained in her post welcoming Fran, our project managers play a crucial role in the success of our work. Finding someone with the right mix of skills and talents can be challenging, and because of this we feel very fortunate to welcome her aboard.

One of the things I love most about the people I work with is that, in addition to being completely badass at their jobs, they also have rich personal lives, interesting hobbies, and multiple creative outlets. In this and many other ways, Monica-Lisa fits in perfectly.

Posted by Voltaire Santos Miran
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Introducing Fran Zablocki

Back in November, we were ISO a PM for LTR.

Today, we announce that the search is over and that the long-term relationship will begin soon. I am thrilled to write that Fran Zablocki will join mStoner next month as a project manager. Perhaps you already know him as @Zablocki.

Fran comes to mStoner well prepared with a successful set of experiences in higher education. He is, for a few more weeks, the online community manager in Alumni Relations at SUNY Geneseo. Before
his current job, Fran spent some time as the web communications manager at Nazareth College. While at Nazareth, Fran was part of the team that deployed the award-winning Flight of the Flyers campaign.

A social media strategist and an expert about alumni communities, Fran offered a presentation about alumni networks and social media at HighEdWeb 2011. At the close of 2011,  he was the guest host for a Higher Ed Live episode called LinkedIn for EDU.

And speaking of 2011, Fran’s personal blog contains one of my favorite posts from last year. He wrote about the relationships colleges and universities have with young alumni and the typical neglect that typically follows graduation. I earnestly recommend his post, I’d like to introduce myself as…myself…and then again, as myself.

Hiring a project manager requires a careful assessment of a wide range of skills and a diverse set of abilities. We make commitments about budgets and time tables and milestones when we begin work with our clients. They are counting on us to deliver, and we rely on mStoner PMs to oversee the full project lifecycle. At mStoner, the PM is also the primary rep for the campus team. So on any given day, Fran will do everything from building a project schedule to analyzing a budget or explaining how usability tests work. He’ll be busy but we’re not worried. He’s got the chops to do the job, and we can’t wait to have him on board.

We’ll welcome Fran officially on February 13. It’ll be our birthday present to him. He wrote this announcement for his personal website. You can read more about Fran on his LinkedIn profile.

Leave a comment about Fran joining our team here on the blog or just Tweet at him. #FranZablockijoinsmStoner

Posted by Susan Evans
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EDUniverse Launch Party!

And you’re invited.

EDUniverse is a site for you. For education professionals who are looking to make their life easier, spend less time searching the web, and who want to discover relevant industry-related content. This party isn’t just a celebration of a site launching. It’s a celebration of the people who work in education, from student affairs to alumni and development to marketing professionals and everyone in between, who are helping shape the future of this industry.

We hope you will join us. This party and EDUniverse will only be successful if you attend.

When: Friday, February 24, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Where: SCVNGR Headquarters, 175 Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02142

Please RSVP by February 15 via our Evite invitation.

Since the announcement of EDUniverse our team has been working hard to get the site ready for beta users. Interested in getting early access? Sign up at EDUniverse.org.

Questions? Email Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager. Or leave a comment!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Want to Advance a Great College and Set Standards for Social Media in .edu?

Kenyon College seeks an experienced communicator with a passion for social media to serve as social media director:

Reporting to the director of public affairs, the social media director in Kenyon’s Office of Public Affairs serves as the primary social media strategist for the College and works with colleagues in Public Affairs and in other offices to develop content for Kenyon’s communications and to implement socially driven campaigns for its social channels.

This is a terrific opportunity to work with a team of talented colleagues at a great college. Job description and application here: Social Media Director at Kenyon College….

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Giving Gold

Congratulations to Rebecca Bernstein and her team at the University at Buffalo for the CASE gold they recently won for their work on UB’s giving site. Susan’s already sung her praises of that site in a recent blog post about what makes a good giving site, but I can tell you a bit about the backstory.

Rebecca and her team based the information architecture and content for their giving site upon the Prideful Belonger/Active Support mental model that we helped develop a couple of years back. That model provided a great deal of insight into the motivations, priorities, feelings, and thoughts of current and prospective donors. Those insights now drive the compelling stories, clear nomenclature, specific calls to action, and educational features that you see on the resulting site.

I love the work that they’ve done and the way in which the site fits into the larger puzzle. The mental model work we did helped to form the foundation of the Digital Communications Transformation Initiative, a multiyear effort that is part of UB2020, the University’s long-range strategic plan. The WCI’s deliverables include:

• Practices and infrastructure that fit UB’s Web environment, its mission and its strategic goals, scalable for the UB enterprise
  
• Standards and information architecture that can be used by university programs, schools and departments
  
• Templates that can be shared throughout the university, geared to helping users produce what they need efficiently and effectively
  
• Web content, production workflow and roles
  
• Web Content Management System (CMS) product using existing infrastructure
  
• Identification of centralized resources needed for Web development support
  

Check out how that team’s work-to-date has unfolded at:

• The School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
  
• The PhD program in Biomedical Sciences
  
• The Department of Pediatrics
  
• The Department of Biochemistry
  
• The Office of the President
  
• The University’s homepage that represents the integration of all of their efforts and lessons learned
  

Want more? Check out the complete list of launched sites under the WCI at http://ubcms.buffalo.edu/about/launched_websites.html.

I’m so impressed with what they’ve accomplished so far:

• A body of mental model research that guides decisions about content, site structure, and navigation aimed at prospective students, faculty, staff, and donors
  
• A visual vocabulary that simultaneously supports the University’s brand and the specific needs of each unit
  
• A collection of technology tools and components that are coded once and available to every group that comes under the WCI
  
• A sensible rollout plan that ensures proper support and successful launches
  

People who haven’t been through a campuswide effort like this tend to underestimate the amount of work, time, and expertise necessary either through internal resources or external help. Many mistake this sort of initiative as a design project or an exercise in programming. Many think that one IA will suit all or that content will magically appear. Some will try to cheat the process by imposing arbitrary dates and deadlines, and some will fail to anticipate the long-term resources, policies, and training necessary to sustain their efforts. Rebecca and her team know better, and I think their work serves as a wonderful model to which we should all aspire.

Posted by Voltaire Santos Miran
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I’m listening. Tell me your version of the story.

All elements of a website should be carefully woven together to inspire and tell a compelling story about the institution. Easier said than done, right? Your .edu website works hard and serves many audiences. Most would agree that:

• The ideal reaction when an alum looks at the site is, “Yes, that reminds me of the school I knew and loved.”
• The ideal reaction when a 16-year-old visits the site is, “Oh, that feels like the kind of place where I’d fit in.”

So how do you get to the essence of an institution? How do you discover what’s unique and special about a school or campus so that you can use what you find out in the visual design, features, and copy of a website?

My best advice? Don’t make assumptions. Don’t assume you already know the story.

All of our client engagements begin with a strategy phase and we have a process for the discovery work that becomes the foundation for a web relaunch project. During strategy, we do a deep dive—we take a number of steps to uncover the detail and discover the gems we’ll need to build an incredible web presence. One of the steps we take is referred to as “intake.”

Intake is a series of small group meetings that we host onsite. We come to campus and talk face-to-face with a range of individuals including current students, faculty, senior leadership, and staff in offices like admissions, marketing, communications, and IT. Sometimes, we include groups of alumni, prospective students, and parents. What we hear during these sessions gives us a sense of the campus community—the collective vision and values—and helps us understand the substance. We hear versions of the institutional story.

But listening to the people who show up for the onsite group meetings we facilitate is just the beginning of the discovery work. Here are some additional recommendations to go along with intake:

• review social media sites


• audit the current website


• analyze the sites of peer or competitor institutions


• read strategic plans, communication plans, recent news, admissions materials, and alumni publications


• consider brand and visual identity guidelines

If your goal is translating the ethos of your community into a vibrant web design with just the right tone for the content, do some discovery. Listen up!

Posted by Susan Evans
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mStoner’s top picks for 2011

For my last blog post of the year I have enlisted the help of the mStoner team to bring you mStoner’s top picks for 2011. In this post you will find the sites, tools, and designs we fell in love with this year. Picks include everything from iPad apps to our favorite uses of social media in higher education.

Without further ado…

Design

Moment Skis
We think this site is cool because of the way it uses horizontal and vertical scrolling to fill the landcape of the screen. It layers several carousels of different types of content including profiles, video, products, and slideshow based photography. The design uses texture and a muted color scheme to give it a mountainy-vintage feel. This is future forward design that’s breaking the boundaries of link by link categorized navigation and molds well to any mobile device. Now, where are my Rossignols?
– Anne Glista and Kevin Rieg, Interactive Designers

Ampersandbox
My favorite project of 2011 was the “Ampersandbox” undergraduate enrollment project we did for the College of William & Mary. They wanted a new viewbook with a dedicated web component that together would capture the personality of William & Mary and set it apart from its peers and competitors. We gave them a box of postcards that superimposed funky, evocative word pairs over photos we pulled from their Flickr feed. I liked it because it was a former client coming back to us for more work, which is always validating. I liked it because the William & Mary client trusted us and was bold enough to consider ideas that were designed to appeal to the right prospective students rather than the most prospective students. I liked it because the creative process was fun and very collaborative. And I liked it because it was successful. William & Mary’s admission counselors tell us the cards have been a hit at college fairs, and the web component, a site that allows visitors to create their own word pairs, photos and stories, has had lots of traffic.
-Mark Sheehy, Creative Director

Blogs and other online tools

The Project Management Hut
As a project manager, this site is very useful to me. I like that articles are contributed by many people, so you aren’t stuck with only one person’s point of view. In addition, the articles are based off of experience and not just what the “tech books” say.
– Beth Lee, Project Manager

Disqus
The slickest snippet for enhancing the social media aspects of your website for 2011 is not up for discussion. It is, in fact, Disqus. Disqus is a unique tool allowing a developer to place a small snippet in any page or template. This quick inclusion immediately allows for inline commenting. It has support for nested responses, a sweet “ajaxy” style, as well as a back end administration site which includes: reporting, user management, moderation, ranking, and much more.
– Kevin Zink and Jim Johnson, Senior Technology Consultants

Seth Godin’s Blog
This year I discovered the writings of Seth Godin. I am currently working through his books and his blog is one of my favorites. Godin’s posts might vary in topic and length but these daily updates never lack inspiration. His stories are relevant, his ideas are thought-provoking, and his encouragement to become a linchpin is motivating. I’m better at what I do because this blog challenges me to think in new ways, work harder, and take risks.
– Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager

Social media in higher education

University of Nottingham’s Election 2010 blog
My hands-down favorite is the University of Nottingham’s Election 2010 blog and social media initiative, which won a CASE Gold in 2011. This is an incredibly smart blend of social (using a blog, Twitter and YouTube) and traditional PR outreach to bloggers and traditional reporters and newscasters with the goal of sharing insights from the University of Nottingham’s political scientists about the 2010 election in the UK. The results are impressive: those experts were quoted in every item of national election coverage on Election Day 2010 and the effort resulted in exceeding all the objectives created for the campaign.
– Michael Stoner, Co-Founder and President

UT Austin’s Know
The best content hub that I’ve seen in 2011 is UT Austin’s Know. This site offers a substantial stream of content, including a way to submit your own. The site navigation is exceptional, the structure is driven by both topics and mediums, and the design supports the comfortable consumption of a wealth of information. The Know social media directory is extensive and likely represents the future for higher ed social media.
– Susan T. Evans, Senior Strategist

Apps for the iPad and iPhone

Dropbox
Is this the most original choice on this list? Not by a long shot! Is Dropbox the one app that has changed the way I work most? Absolutely. This year I had an onsite client visit where I was able to use the iPad to read my usability testing script, revise the site IA, review the project timeline, and make minor edits to a change order. Because of Dropbox I could easily access, edit, and change those documents. My iPad has turned into the swiss army knife of productivity toolsets. And that is largely thanks to Dropbox.
– Jeremiah Worth, Project Manager

Flipboard
The app I used on my iPad more than any other in the last year is Flipboard, the pocket-sized social magazine. It’s a place to discover new, curated content and it connects to many of the social networks I use every day. Flipboard connects with my Facebook account to keep me up to date on my friends and family. I use Twitter as a way to keep up with industry thought leaders, and I can view their tweets from the app. I can share content, save it to Instapaper for later, and keep up with my Google Reader. Even better? A new iPhone version was released this week!
– Rob Cima, Co-Founder and CFO

Books

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs defined innovation for our generation. This book is fascinating.

Mobile First
A terrific case for inverting the traditional approach to designing websites as more people use their smartphones and tablets as alternatives to laptops and desktops.
– Voltaire Miran Santos, Co-Founder and CEO

Do you have a top pick for 2011 that you would like to share? Leave a comment.

On behalf of the entire team at mStoner, there is no time more fitting to say “thank you” for everything you do for the education community and to wish you a happy holiday season. See you in 2012!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Six Reasons Why Your Institution’s Mobile Site Needs to Be a Priority in 2012

Making sure your audiences can get to vital information about your institution—wherever they are and whenever they want it—should be a top strategic priority of every college, university, and independent school. One way institutions can support this goal is to make sure they are providing audiences with web sites optimized for mobile viewing and use. If your institution doesn’t have a mobile site, here are some reasons why it should be a critically important priority in 2012. If your college, university, or school already has a mobile site, the sources below should help create a case for adding more content and utility next year.

Traffic to institutional sites from mobile devices is rapidly increasing.
Source: The College of William & Mary
Some institutions, such as the College of William & Mary, have seen as much as a 500% increase in traffic to their mobile sites in the last two years. A growing number of people are finding value on college and university mobile sites.

More smartphones are being sold than desktop computers.
Source: PCMag
It’s old news that smartphones are outpacing the sale of desktop computers (with tablet sales on the rise as well). This means that how and where people access the internet is changing. As the way people access content changes, colleges, universities, and schools need to be prepared to address strategic goals and visitor needs on smartphones.

A vast majority of smartphone users use their smartphones to access the web.
Source: Pew Internet
84% of people who own a smartphone in the US use it to access the web. I included this statistic to add some context to the previous one, since some people might wonder if smartphones are primarily being used for verbal communication and apps.

There is a “mobile-only internet” contingent on the rise.
Source: ondeviceresearch.com
There is a growing population of people who only browse the internet on mobile devices. This seems to be truest in developing countries in Africa and Asia, but many colleges and universities are looking to build a global brand. By implementing a site that looks great on mobile devices you are decreasing the chances you will alienate people who never browse the web on a desktop machine.

Mobile access to the internet will eclipse desktop internet access as soon as 2015.
Source: idc.com
While some of the other statistics in this post hint this is where we are headed, the data here is pretty explicit: we will soon be living in an age where more people are accessing the internet via mobile than on desktop computers. Now is the time to deploy a first-generation mobile solution, start measuring how people are using it, and iterate the site effectively over time.

The innovators are now developing for mobile experiences even before they touch the web site.
Source: daringfireball.net
It’s not to say this should be a primary consideration, but many companies outside of higher ed are now developing for smartphones or iOs first, and then developing for a desktop website experience. The demands of code and site development are starting to follow the conventions of devices sold to access the internet. For a more expansive version of this philosophy, check out the book Mobile First by Luke Wreblonski.

Lastly, I’ll round these facts with something that is not a statistic, but rather a tactical consideration when building a case for a mobile site: cost. It costs a fraction of a full site relaunch to do a mobile site, usually because the information provided is more transactional and self-contained in a mobile environment than it is in a sprawling college or university site. If you’re thinking about how to prioritize web or marketing budgets, consider that mobile is both future-friendly and comparatively affordable.

Posted by Doug Gapinski
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