Thinking ROI on Websites

A great technology story from the April 22 Chronicle of Higher Ed by Josh Keller talks about three university's approaches to rebuilding their websites. I used a lot of similar thinking in the last go around on ArkansasRazorbacks.com last fall, but what is now making its way to the institutional front page is a step further.

If you think athletics faces content problems, consider the main institution. A great pull quote from John Drevs, the manager of web services at Loyola, speaks to the problem of the "five-headed monster" of the primary audiences: students, prospective students, faculty, staff and alumni. Drevs admits:

"Right now, our home page is a shotgun approach"

Athletics solved part of that problem with coach's recruiting sites -- but those quickly become fan driven competitions as well -- and foundation websites for donors and alums. What you haven't seen a lot of in athletics is Drevs' approach for Loyola -- an internal website that is served up to computers that are within the Loyola domains.

The article also talks a lot about the use of analytics -- an overall must read.