3. Take a look at the St. Clair College website. With visuals, what would you propose to St. Clair College to improve/enhance this new website to effectively market to potential incoming local domestic students? Please provide three (3) recommendations and justify your answer with detailed reasoning. (9 Marks)
This is the very first image you see on the St. Clair website. The position of this image is one of the most crucial areas for an important and valuable image. This section of the website sets the tone for the rest of the website because viewers form an opinion of the website within seconds of visiting a site. This image shows a student in “Enactus” which can be appealing to students looking for business activities at their college – but local students visiting for the first time would not know what Enactus is which makes this image not effective. If you minimize the window while you have this page open the 3 yellow blocks of copy to the left cover this entire image which makes this image pointless because viewers can’t see it at all.
My recommendation for this image is to achieve the goal of targeting local domestic students which can be done by using an image that shows multiple students of different races to start with, and not limited to only one white girl and a blurred-out younger man in the back of the image. This group of students should be in a common area on the main campus where students can talk, study, or hang out. They should be happy, laughing, and seen with books or laptops. The reason for this is it would showcase how any visitor on the site can find social belonging and does not speak to any specific program because you never know which program the visitor is looking into. Enactus applies to a very small category of programs and would not appeal to those in Fashion, Nursing, or more. I would also never put text over the image if there was any chance of the image being completely covered.
This section of the homepage is a perfect opportunity for very clear images that communicate a certain message, speak to the right audience, and showcase the many highlights of different programs. In this section there are images but you can never tell exactly what they are of which is a huge missed opportunity for web content.
Looking at the U Windsor website, they have the same thing on their homepage which is a carousel of images with supporting text, but they did exactly what I would recommend which is to use this section of the site to showcase their students, programs, educators, sports teams and more using very eye-catching mages that tell a story alone without supporting text. The very short headlines are a great way of using minimal text to convey the message and this example would speak directly to the audience of local domestic students looking for information about programs, sports, or anything important from St. Clair.
This is the hotspot for local domestic students visiting St. Clair’s website because it holds the most powerful and important information – Programs. The header image on this page is quite bland and shows the St. Clair logo which to me is a waste of this great image position. The logo is on every single page because it’s in the main navigation which is why I don’t think this image is necessary. It does not communicate any message or evoke emotion.
My recommendation would be similar to what U Windsor did for their program page. This is a very eye-catching and appealing use of this position on the page because it shows a young girl who looks very confident and happy. This is a very bold image and could speak directly to local domestic students who look like her but also want to feel like her. Students want to feel confident in their program choice and know that they can find their answer on St. Clair’s program page, by using a powerful image similar to this, future students at St. Clair can feel empowered and persuaded to take action on their site.