Angelo State University Website Update
From the Nominator
In spring 2023, the Office of Communications and Marketing completed a comprehensive refresh of all the academic program pages on the Angelo State University website (angelo.edu), including 49 undergraduate degree programs, 30 master’s degree programs, and four doctoral degree programs. The Office of Communications and Marketing staff provided all the content for the new pages, including text, photos, search-engine optimization (SEO) descriptions, etc., while Web Services staff provided technical and coding support. The project was undertaken primarily to give the pages a consistent design, updated program details, and improve SEO performance. We also wanted to increase interaction between prospective students and our admissions team by providing a prominent and easy-to-use electronic request for information (RFI) form. Communications and Marketing staff solicited program details and superlatives from academic department chairs and program directors to provide updated text. Staff also set up photo shoots for each program and conducted extensive keyword research to improve the content of each webpage. The new web pages were launched in the summer. Visits, page views and requests for information have dramatically increased across the board, ranging from 14% to 99%, for visits and page views of individual programs. RFI submissions specifically increased, with some months experiencing an over 500% increase in submissions from the same month the year prior.
From the Judges
This entry demonstrated successful collaboration with internal resources to render a considered, welcoming, and effective site--all accomplished within a small budget. Significant effort was made to ensure the redesigned pages were as compelling as possible for their prospective student audience. They prioritized SEO and clear, useful information. The content that addressed the "why" for each program was well done. We appreciated that successful outcomes were reinforced with data points and year-over-year comparison data.