Higher education’s content challenge

For Australia’s giant higher education sector, the web is a crucial tool for connecting to current and prospective students.

According to research by customer experience benchmarking firm Global Reviews, Australia’s biggest universities are doing a good job of meeting user expectations, but they have one big challenge – getting users to the right content when they need it.

Every month, Global Reviews examines a different industry sector, including banking, finance, communications and retail, to find out which companies deliver the best online experience for their users.

Global Reviews, which has been delivering customer experience benchmarking for more than a decade, is a completely independent research company, focused on providing insights and actionable recommendations that lead to improved sales conversion and customer retention.

Global Reviews measures the online customer experience by examining a website’s content, features and functionality. Typically more than 400 individual criteria are evaluated. Criteria are determined based on best practice usability principles, research on conversion analysis and annual surveys of customers’ needs and expectations when completing specific tasks within an industry.

The end result is an Index score, which is a presented as a percentage. A website with a score of below 55% is considered to have failed to meet expectations; a score between 55-68% is considered to have met expectations; a website with 68-83% has exceeded expectation; and anything above 83% is marked as outstanding.

The eight organisations studied in the higher learning study performed well, posting an industry average of 63.1%.

Five universities posted a score above 68%, indicating that they exceed customer expectations.

Melbourne’s Monash University took the prize for the website delivering the best customer experience, with an index score of 73.4%, just ahead of Curtin University (72.6%) and the University of Queensland (72.3%).

Lead researcher Paul Moorehead says the biggest asset of the university is also their biggest challenge – content.

“Universities scored highest in the provision of content across key areas, yet still face challenges with leading users to content in an engaging and enticing way,” he says.

“Universities generally face the same challenge of structuring lots of content into a meaningful information architecture for their core audiences – current and prospective students – which have specific needs and levels of support.”

Moorehead says a number of the tertiary institutions even tripped up on the basics.

“Many universities did not have homepages that met the informational needs of new users, including entry requirements and orientation information.”

Five key lessons:

• Stand out from the pack: Moorehead says most of the universities studied can improve how they present their value proposition and must work harder to differentiate their offerings from those of key competing universities.
• Improve the use of social media: While universities may cater to younger, most connected customers, their use of social media could be better. Moorehead says the universities must improve the way they connect with students through interaction and social media to create what he calls “positive impressions”. For example, Moorehead says campus maps need to be interactive and easier to use.
• Provide a better welcome: The transition from secondary to tertiary education can be difficult for some students – the universities should be making it easier by enhancing the functionality and content offered in orientation to help familiarise new students in their new environment.
• Provide more options for accessing information: Moorehead says the vast volumes of course information housed on these websites makes it crucial for the sites to provide options for how students can search and browse
• Improve navigation: Moorehead says most universities would benefit by having global navigation that assists users to navigate between key sections of the site.

SmartCompany will feature a Customer Experience Industry Benchmark each month, exclusively compiled by Global Reviews, an independent customer experience benchmarking firm.

Global Reviews measures online customer experience by examining a website’s content, features and functionality. Typically more than 400 individual criteria are evaluated. Criteria are determined based on best practice usability principles, research on conversion analysis and annual surveys of customers’ needs and expectations when completing specific tasks within an industry.