This may be a little tricky, since it still has to project the “university website” image. A fancy university site at least needs an attention-getting slideshow with the pretty pictures and links to press releases.
I’d guess increasing your apparent value to prospective students and their parents is the main value of having shiny fluff on your front page. But I may not be separating the fluff-ass-marketing from the fluff-as-cultural-norm : there is an expectation of what a university page looks like, and people are uncomfortable when their expectations are violated too radically. It’s possible that there’s no intrinsic value to sticking a slideshow with pretty pictures and links to press releases on your website, but because of our current expectations it just looks bad not to have something like that.
This may be a little tricky, since it still has to project the “university website” image. A fancy university site at least needs an attention-getting slideshow with the pretty pictures and links to press releases.
Why? Does this attract alumni donations? Prospective students? Why exactly do you have to project the university website image?
I’d guess increasing your apparent value to prospective students and their parents is the main value of having shiny fluff on your front page. But I may not be separating the fluff-ass-marketing from the fluff-as-cultural-norm : there is an expectation of what a university page looks like, and people are uncomfortable when their expectations are violated too radically. It’s possible that there’s no intrinsic value to sticking a slideshow with pretty pictures and links to press releases on your website, but because of our current expectations it just looks bad not to have something like that.
At least some universities these days have a separate, more useful, site for the actual students to log into.