As marketing students at Coventry University, we are going to have a look at our University’s website, trying to evaluate where it is effective and where it could be improved. With an organisation such as a university it is imperative that it is made available on the World Wide Web and provides a good quality of services and information. The website represents the university's facade and image and must make the most of the Internet for its publicity and marketing needs. Points that require attention include: recruitment, facilities, environment, prestige, expression among others. These need to easy to navigate and browse, with a clear layout in order to make it more user friendly. The user profile of the website visitors will need to identify which will include current students and potential students. The website will need to image balancing youth and tradition; it needs to be dynamic, professional in order to increase its trust and trustworthiness aspect of the website. The university will targeting users worldwide, a university's website has a role of the university's facade and so it has to be representative , interactive and accessible from everywhere and at any time, which is where an e-marketing team becomes essential. From the building of the practical IT services to the layout (design, publishing, interaction), keeping the key words in mind: Marketing & Promotion.
We will therefore concentrating on Coventry University’s e-marketing strategy. From first impressions the website appears to have been user friendly designed, with a dominance of the Coventry colour of blue and other bright colours. The layout is clear and embellished with pictures and visible parts creating the feeling of simplicity, facilitation and trustworthiness. Furthermore, the layout tries to get the advantages of new technologies and tendencies such as links to a dedicated channel on YouTube. In addition, the e-marketing team has used ‘funny’ and creative fonts as well as humorous graphics; however the professional aspect has not been forgotten with the dominance of the university logo, the awards achievement and a wide and deep range of links. Users can navigate with relative ease through the university courses, the various faculties and schools, the research domain, the international area which is specifically designed for potential international students, the news and events to be aware of in Coventry university life, the Alumni which is ideal for former students, an overview of the city and its activities and finally through the university itself.
In order to take a more critical perspective of the IT resources available to Coventry University and try and look to the future we are going to focus on one aspect of the website which will aiming to improve the relationship with users by increasing their interest. This can be done by offering the possibility to interact, comment and to get involved in an on-line based community. Therefore the use of tools such has CU My space, CU Second Life, CU Face book and CU YouTube have been integrated to the websites allowing it to part of the global Internet trend, targeting a broad range of users. The users can feel a closer association with university and see it has a real modern educational centre which is beneficial to its image and the reputation. In addition, these kinds of tools give to the university a massive presence on the World Wide Web and a capacity to better reach users on a global scale. These online-based communities allow followers to interact with former and current students and staff, offering more than a simple ‘old fashioned’ e-mail and other formal exchanges.
Furthermore, the webtv feature available allows users to find videos about the fields the University works in, research undertaken, examples of lessons taught at the University and some videos on student life or as it’s known: students ‘slice-of-life’ videos. Users can find videos either by searching for them or a taking more casual approach of looking for related key words which gives the University a possibility to widen the way in which it can be viewed; a student browsing on YouTube for instance might find a video related to the university and consequently be interested in the university and go to visit the web page.
On the channel page, students from all over the world have the opportunity to share comments and suggestion; this is a positive aspect as it gives an image of transparency of the university and its characteristics. Positive comments and feedback make for good publicity but this approach is risky as negative comments might be posted.
It can therefore be said that Coventry University has done a good job of attempting to exploit new technologies and opportunities made available by the Internet. As previously mentioned; the professionalism aspect has not been forgotten and it appears that a greater emphasis has been placed on improving this aspect in the last period. This has done well for the image of the University thus it could be suggested to keep those features updated in the future. The home page is well structured, but in order to give a clear vision about the different faculties that are comprised within the university: direct links in the home pages of the different faculties would improve the navigation of the website. Although it is possible to look for the different courses through the home page, categorising the search first between the various faculties would show a more tidy effect to the users and subsequently making it more user friendly.
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