University Business - December 2012 - (Page 34)

Test Driving MOBILE websites, the research found, are more apt to watch videos, request a campus visit, or get financial aid information. The consultancy also suggests higher ed institutions create easy access to social media outlets and update the mobile version as regularly as the institution’s regular website. Yet 39 percent of colleges and universities didn’t have a mobile website as of winter 2012, when they were surveyed for the 2012 State of the Mobile Web report by UB’s Internet Technology columnist Karine Joly, who publishes the blog College Web Editor. “Mobile is not just something on the fringes of people’s experience at a university,” says Eric Kim, vice president of user experience at Modo Labs. “It is core to how people interact with an institution.” In the case of mobile apps versus mobile friendly websites, it’s not a case of either/ or. Web-development professionals and officials at the companies that serve them say schools should evolve their mobile web strategies based on their analytics. Sometimes, an app is ideal. In other situations, mobile-optimized websites make sense. sizes in 2009. That number shot up to 523 in 2012. UC San Diego was one of the first campuses in the UC system to implement responsive design, which earned it a 2012 Golden Sautter Award from the University of California Office of the President. A mobile audience also has different needs because visitors may be using a site as prospective students or as current students looking up the campus shuttle schedule. Curating content for a mobile audience requires a constant analysis of web traffic statistics. As Erik Runyon, manager of interactive development at the University of Notre Dame (Ind.), says, “Taking a site from a desktop and smashing it down to a mobile device is only going to hurt the experience.” The Case for Mobile Sites All institutions’ websites aim to serve, but mobile-optimized sites take it further because of the pint-sized real estate. Much like driving past a billboard on a highway, a mobile site must provide just enough information to move the visitor to take an action. Although native apps—those built for iPhones and Android devices—are popular, they are less capable of serving prospective students and other online visitors because apps must be downloaded to view content. “If you were going to do anything, do a mobile website, from what we learned,” Nekritz of SUNY Oswego says. At that college, mobile traffic has been exploding, doubling every 220 days. In August, 15 percent of visits to the college’s websites were from mobile devices. That is an almost four-fold increase from the previous August. “Very shortly, sometime next year, more than half of our visitors will be accessing our sites from a mobile device,” Nekritz explains, adding that his institution has invested in building mobile websites by contracting with Modo Labs. The university’s new mobile presence was unveiled this fall. universitybusiness.com Designing for “Mobile First” With mobile traffic rapidly climbing at institutions, an ideal web strategy involves designing for mobile first and building up from there. The principle of “mobile first,” detailed in Luke Wroblewski’s book of the same name (2011), puts the onus on sharp content management. Because device screens are much smaller than desktop screens, only the most essential information needs to be provided. “It’s not about their device. It’s about the audience. We use content strategy in all our discussions. Your real estate is so small you’re going to ask the question, ‘What is the most important thing for this page?’” says Brett Pollak, director of the web office at the University of California, San Diego. Another variable to consider is screen size. Pollak says with hundreds of device resolutions accessing sites, there is no predictable “fold,” or the point where the page breaks as it does with desktops. No one 34 | December 2012 As Notre Dame administrators know, a campus team can’t just take a site developed for a desktop and smash it down to mobile device size. can be sure how much content will be seen by the visitor when he or she first lands on the page. If a school opts to display all of its content on its website or conversely, slashes chunks of it to fit it “above the fold,” it may be doing mobile users a disservice. For example, the UC San Diego home page was viewed in 22 different screen http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - December 2012

University Business - December 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Money Matters
Independent Outlook
5 Reasons Flipped Classrooms Work
Test Driving Mobile
Open Source Myth Busters
Models of Efficiency
1st Annual Readers’ Choice Awards
Education Innovators
Viewpoint
Endowments: New Questions
End Note

University Business - December 2012