– Design Trends and Why They Matter – Intro to Resources: A New Way to Organise your Online Files – Getting the Most Out of Online Admissions – Advanced PPC: Ad Extensions, Remarketing Tactics, and ROI
Speaker: Kealan Duffy, Finalsite
Kealan Duffy, Finalsite UK's Production Manager, delivered an energetic presentation on design trends and why they matter to us and our audience. We saw some fabulous examples of award- winning school websites that are leading the way for schools across the globe. He suggested that more complex stories can benefit from making the visitor the protagonist, and that people love customising things. He also highlighted the importance of having a story with a beginning, middle and end.
Kealan's School Story Recipe
Speaker: Alexander Wack, Finalsite
Alex walked us through the new Resources module and the features that help you wrangle those unruly files into a system even Marie Kondo would be proud of! One of the cool features of Resources is the ease it brings to sharing files and automatically-optimised images and videos on school websites. He showed us how with the new Resources module you can organise your files and reorganise them as many times as you'd like. Neat!
Alex's 3 top benefits of the new Resources module:
1. Use Resources to organise and display all of your website files, from images to videos to pdfs 2. Resources will auto-optimise your photos and videos -- we'll magically serve an appropriate-sized version to match the user's device for the fastest load times and best experience 3. Use Resources in other modules like Posts and Messages, for a uniform experience across the platform
Speaker: Mackenzie Hovermale Company: OpenApply
Mackenzie Hovermale, OpenApply Director, discussed best practices and provided tips for creating an effective online admissions process that improves the parent experience, streamlines administrative work, and optimises the use of your admissions system. What more could we ask for!
Mackenzie's Key Takeaways
Transferring an offline admissions process in its entirety to an online system will only cause frustration. Consider how online admissions can transform your process, making your admissions office more effective than ever.
The role of admissions has changed from managing data entry to managing data integrity.
Stay informed about updates and improvements that could streamline your workflow or improve the family experience!
Tips for Admissions in the Digital World
1. Ensure your online system is accessible from anywhere on any device 2. Using dropdown and multiple choice fields will make analyzing your admissions data easy 3. Only collect the data you need 4. Don't forget, personal interactions will always remain important to the admissions process 5. Be open to new workflows and processes
Speaker: Red Abbott, Finalsite
In this practical session, Red spoke in depth about under-utilised ways to take your online ad efforts to the next level from top to bottom. Ad extensions are an under utilised way to get more (and more appropriate) clicks. Re-marketing to mid-funnel prospects can help plug your leaks. Red described the conversation around advertising ROI in most admin team meetings as far too squishy, so he talked about ways to set the concrete there.