The University of Texas Permian Basin

Fixing the Falcon Shuffle

“The Falcon Shuffle” is UTPB’s internal shorthand for the frustration students feel when they can’t get their questions answered. The shuffle looked something like this:

• Student wants to know how to change their minor.
• Student opens the UTPB website.
• Student fails to find an answer.
• Student calls the wrong department, who tells them which department to call.
• Student calls that department, finds out they need to fill out a form, which unfortunately isn’t available on the website.
• And so on…

This shuffle isn’t unique to UTPB. Most universities are decentralized, and internal communication often stops at the office door. But UTPB’s old website exacerbated the problem by offering incomplete and inaccurate information.

To help alleviate the pain students (and parents) felt, we offered three solutions:

First, we built their website using the philosophy of C.O.P.E.—Create Once, Publish Everywhere. If an important piece of content—e.g., a professor’s office number—changed, UTPB’s web team would update it in one place in their CMS, but it would change in the 4-5 places it appears across the website.

Second, we included a “common question module,” which looks like this:

When a student selects a question from the drop-down menu, they’re instantly redirected to the page on the site that contains their answer. UTPB’s web team can create as many questions as they want, allowing them to respond quickly to new issues.

Third, UTPB can insert a “contact information module” almost anywhere on their site. The contact module pulls info from the main university directory, so if contact info is updated there (once) it pushes those updates automatically to every contact module on the site. And it helps ensure that students are calling or emailing the right person and not being shuffled on to someone new.

Smaller is Better

Confronted with the prospect of the Wall Street Journal’s so-called “death spiral,” most schools—public and private, big and small—believe they should create a brand of “bigness.” They assume the best way to increase enrollment and improve the mix of applicants is to craft an identity that claims, “We are a giant school full of giant opportunities. Come here. Please.”

With UTPB, we went in the opposite direction. Because bigger isn’t always better. When it comes to college, it’s often worse.

Bigger means each student is a smaller portion of the community. Bigger means more hoops to jump through and pitfalls to avoid. Bigger means less face time with professors and advisors. Bigger means greater competition—for jobs, for attention, for opportunities. (Not to mention the fact that many of UTPB’s prospective students come from smaller communities and are more likely to thrive in a smaller setting.)

The first major deliverable of the project was a Messaging Platform—a document that details how the University should talk and think about itself. In it, we helped UTPB determine how to embrace and celebrate their size.

To emphasize UTPB’s small, high-touch, personalized student experience, we worked with UTPB to identify a content marketing strategy that emphasized:

• Student-friendly user experiences (more on that below)
• Student stories that highlight their unique backgrounds
• Why and how UTPB alumni land lucrative, fulfilling jobs

Selling Life After Graduation

Did we mention that UT Permian Basin sits atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves? Because it does. And with that sort of energy comes a buffet of high-paying, sustainable jobs across a variety of industries and sectors—e.g., engineering, transportation, finance, hospitality, health care, etc.

No university is better positioned to feed West Texas’ appetite for employees than UTPB. Perhaps UTPB’s biggest differentiator, even more than their size, is how well Falcons are doing in the booming West Texas job market.

But their previous messaging and website weren’t flexible enough to make that clear to prospective students.

That’s all changed now. Now, the moment a user lands on the new UTPB website, they immediately see and read about how specific, recently graduated Falcons are jumping to the head of the pack in their careers.

How Students Actually Pick a Major

Too many universities plop their internal structure—i.e., how they think of themselves as an organization—onto their website. It’s an easy cut-and-paste job that ignores how students think about their future when perusing a website.

Consider this college (which will remain anonymous):

If you’re a student who’s curious about majoring in History, from the school’s homepage you must first click on “Academics,” then “Colleges and Schools,” then “COLABS” (whatever that is), then “History/Geography/General Studies,” before finally click onto the page for an undergrad History major.

That’s five clicks. You lost them around click two. (Not to mention the supremely bland stock photo of a diploma that dominates the top-half of the page.)

Students couldn’t care less about how UTPB is structured internally. Hierarchies and org charts aren’t only boring to them; they’re irrelevant.

To offer an online experience that mirrors students’ habits, we did two things:

1. Designed a Natural Degree Search

When students visit the “All Degrees & Programs” page, they’re able to slice and dice the massive content in any number of ways:

Users can filter by undergraduate or graduate degrees or certificate programs. Users can type in the name of the subject they’re interested in and the list immediately filters in real time. Users can see “online only” degrees by checking a single box. And at a glance, users can see what kinds of degrees and specializations exist within each academic program.

This is how people want to browse their future.

2. Added a “Degree Explorer” to the Homepage

Just below the “fold” of the UTPB homepage, users can begin digging into the degrees they’re curious about. We call it a “Degree Explorer” and it looks like this:

Using the drop-down menu within each general academic area, users can be instantly navigated to the relevant degree subpage to learn more (and apply).

Turning Prospects into Falcons

Choosing a university is a “high-consideration” decision. Students take months to pick where they’ll spend their next years. Along the way, there are milestones; together, these milestones constitute a user journey. One of the first steps in this journey is visiting the UTPB website. But once there, how do we get these prospective Falcons to take the next step?

Our solution is a call-to-action module, which appears on (almost) every other page of the site. UTPB decides where it goes. It looks like this:

“Apply” is the ultimate goal. But before they’re ready for that commitment, students can select two lower-stakes options: “Request Information” and “Visit.” Now, UTPB can track conversions on all three options.

Accessibility

Websites should be usable by every person, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. Sadly, far too many higher-ed websites aren’t accessible—i.e., they’re confusing for users who, because they have a sensory challenge like visual impairment, need assistive technologies like screen readers.

As with every website we build, UTPB adheres to the most common accessibility standards, WCAG AA. While it’s ultimately up to the website administrator to ensure accessibility remains a priority, we’ve crafted a website that makes it easy.

Content Governance

Even the tiniest universities are complex, dynamic institutions. Facts change quickly; website content grows stale in a flash. Without a content governance plan, any school will find itself playing an endless game of catch-up. And while they’re playing that game, students grow confused and irritated.

UT Permian Basin knew this; they understood that launching a big, beautiful new website is far easier than keeping it big and beautiful.

So we helped them craft a Content Governance Plan—a detailed document that includes sections titled:

• Content Style Guide
• Workflow for New Content
• Workflow for Removing & Archiving Content
• Content Calendar
• Website Council Structure

With these new policies in place, UTPB is poised to take total, structured control of their website—ensuring that visitors now and long into the future receive the most helpful content available.

Striking it Rich

By student population, UT Permian Basin is the smallest of the nine schools in The University of Texas System. But in terms of professional opportunity, clear messaging, and content sophistication, they’re now one of the mightiest. It’s our honor to have flown for awhile with the Falcons, and we look forward to watching them solidify their position as one of those “winning universities” in the years ahead.