1. The new public launch date will give us more time to carefully engage the thoughts and concerns of the Tyndale Community. This is especially related to the ongoing discussions concerning the nature of the institution and the proposed marketing language of the website.

2. The new launch time will enable us to have more content ready for the public launch. The various development phases of the website rebuild will not be delayed.

3. We will be able to have dispersed training for content managers to these times: June, September and October.

We want to reassure the Tyndale community that the new website will still be up and ready to impact the incoming class of Fall 2010.

On the drive in this morning Phil and I were talking about awards shows and it got me thinking about industry awards — and more specifically website awards. There are lots of websites that are there only to showcase and/or judge other websites. EduStyle.net is a great example. Webmasters post there site designs for the community to critique and users can vote with a thumbs up or thumbs down. EduCheckup.com does video reviews of university websites — here is a review of the current tyndale.ca. Of course there is also the webpagesthatsuck.com awards — don’t want to win that one!

Now if Tyndale were to win an award — what would I want the award for? I do like our design, we have some pretty good copy. Most of our recent photos have been stunning. Our php and html code is clean and correct — what about awards for these? Well those are all fine and good — but the award I would cherish the most wold be an award for usability.

David Beyer of the Academica Group said it best when he said

“In order to make Tyndale’s web presence a success we must understand and follow website best practices and this key guiding principle — websites must answer the needs of the users first.”

We are in the midst of a complete rebuild of the Tyndale website. We have had lots of discussions around lots of topics — but none more important than our users and how they want to use our website. We have examined our information architecture and navigation — how do we make this more understandable to our users? We have looked at how our design templates may help the users find the information they are looking for. We have looked at using language that a user unfamiliar with our context may still understand. We are working on functionality that our users need and want to use.

Of course we are looking to have an attractive design — stimulating copy and photography — clean code — good website manageability… but our primary goal: answer the needs of the users first.

We will be unveiling the new website soon and launching it to the public April 1st. I hope that people on eduStyle.net will give it a thumbs up — but more importantly I hope that our current and future students — our alumni — our donors — our users — give it the thumbs up!

…and the award for website usability goes to…

Note: We have delayed the public launch of the new website for the following reasons:
1. The new public launch date will give us more time to carefully engage the thoughts and concerns of the Tyndale Community. This is especially related to the ongoing discussions concerning the nature of the institution and the proposed marketing language of the website.

2. The new launch time will enable us to have more content ready for the public launch. The various development phases of the website rebuild will not be delayed.

3. We will be able to have dispersed training for content managers to these times: June, September and October.

If you have any questions please let me know.

The Nehemiah Project is a project to rebuild the foundation of Tyndale’s main website. Like in the story of Nehemiah (a biblical character from the old testament) — the foundation of Tyndale’s website needs some attention.

Over the last number of years there has been tremendous growth in prospective students using the Internet to aid them in their choice of post-secondary schools. Keeping in step with this trend, Tyndale has been investing great efforts to provide our future students with the information and site features that they both need and want. We have grown.

Tyndale started it’s web presence in 1996 with a few pages explaining who we were and how to contact us if you had questions. Today we have about 14,000 items indexed by Google and somewhere in the range of 6000 – 7000 pages of information — all being managed by 40+ web content managers.

With rapid growth comes increased complexity. Although our current home built content management system (DPA) has served us well over the years — but we have out grown it. It is time to rebuild.

I am introducing this project to you today, but it has been in the works for about a year now. We have gone through an extensive Request for Proposal (RFP) process. We received, reviewed and ranked a number of great responses. Along with the Web Steering Committee, we selected our vendor. We have initiated the research and are reexamining all of our Information Architecture (I/A) — we are well on the way to a successful relaunch of www.tyndale.ca

Watch this blog for more information on the project including updates and opportunities for you to give feedback.

Last week I had submitted Tyndale’s website for review. On Friday Nick did a live review of www.tyndale.ca. Websites are scores in three areas – Visual, Information and Code. We scored an overall 88% (B+) with visual getting an 80%, information getting an 85% and code scoring a 99% – hey nobody is perfect

As we embark on a website redesign project, Nick’s review will be quite helpful. Most of the negative comments he pointed out have already been identified as area to work on but it is nice to have them confirmed.

Watch the video below and then leave me a comment. What would you like to see changed on Tyndale’s website? Do you think Nick was wrong on any points? What did he miss?

Click here to view the embedded video.

So if code is your thing or you would like to spend a few minutes trying to figure out why web developers have to deal with – swing by and see what you think.

Overall Web Site Facts

• We had over 36,200 visits
• We had an average of 1170 visits per day with our highest day (20th) having 1600 visits
• We had 640,200 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 127 different countries covering most continents
• The top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) hit our web site to index our pages over 98,000 times
• 3.7% of our traffic came directly from search engines with Google alone accounting for over 13,000 hits

University College Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had about 2,500 visits
• We had an average of 79.97 visits per day
• We had 9,974 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 71 different countries covering most continents
• 60.91% of the visitors were new visits
• Visitors used 6 different operating systems ranging from Windows and Mac to the iPhone and iPod Touch
• 60 people completed an inquiry form online
• 21 people registered for campus visits online

Seminary Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had about 1,600 visits
• We had an average of 49.90 visits per day
• We had 5,201 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 59 different countries covering most continents
• 56.17% of the visitors were new visits
• 30 people completed an inquiry form online
• 20 people registered for campus visits online

Compiled November 5, 2008 by Andrew Smith, Admissions and Marketing

A recent study (Engaging the “Social Networking” Generation E-Expectations: Class of 2007 Report (PDF)) places Online applications as the 3rd most requested activity students would like to complete on a College or University web site. 81% of respondents said they would like to complete their application online.

While we have had an online application available for over six years – this application was being hosted off-site and the information gathered had to be re-entered into our database system. This solution created extra work  and left a lot of room for human error. Using a third-party vendor also comes at a cost – a charge for each application received.

Our new Online Application – code named “app|app”  –  is integrated directly with our prospective student database. This means that the information that the student enters will – once checked – be inserted directly into the main database. The database will automatically check for duplicate records helping us to keep our data clean and our communications effective.

To begin a new application the prospective student only needs to provide their first name, last name and email along with which school the wish to apply to. Once they have started their application they are able to save it at any point and return to complete it later.

The application is divided into four steps – these steps are each hosted under their own tabs allowing for simple navigation and a shorter page structure.

Once the application has been submitted the prospective student is presented with their own application page. This provides a checklist of things required to complete their application (references, transcripts etc.) along with access to any forms they may need. There is also a online view and a print view of their application available.

While I am really excited about the increased functionality and cost savings this will provide for the Admissions staff here at Tyndale – I am equally excited about the dramatically  enhanced user experience we can now provide for our prospective students.

A special thanks to Jason Carson who helped tremendously throughout this project. Also a special thanks to Chris Wu and to those who helped with our testing process. This was a real team effort!

If anyone would like to have a demo of the Online Application please see either Jason or myself – either of us will be proud to show this off!

I have been busy preparing a micro-site for the DMin outlining the program information, admissions requirements, frequently asked questions etc. This site launched on schedule yesterday (March 25, 2008) and has already been drawing in visitors!

As usual this has been a team effort – special thanks to Janet, Karina, Kim, Paul and Phil.

Check out the web site!

Do these numbers surprise you? In what way? Please feel free to leave your comments below…

(Update: see 2008 version)

Overall Web Site Facts

• We had over 37,000 visits
• We had an average of 1199 visits per day with our highest day (18th) having 1546 visits
• We had 310,850 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 108 different countries covering every continent
• The top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) hit our web site to index our pages over 49,000 times
• 7.1% of our traffic came directly from search engines with Google alone accounting for almost 10,000 hits

University College Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had over 2,900 visits
• We had an average of 93.61 visits per day
• We had 13,288 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 67 different countries covering every continent
• 71.81% of the visitors were new visits
• Visitors used 6 different operating systems ranging from Windows and Mac to Nintendo Wii (gaming system)
• 97 people completed an inquiry form online
• 37 people registered for campus visits online

Seminary Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had about 1,800 visits
• We had an average of 58.03 visits per day
• We had 5,519 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 63 different countries covering every continent
• 71.26% of the visitors were new visits
• 36 people completed an inquiry form online
• 29 people registered for campus visits online

In the number one spot is our main site with a list of sub sections to our site. Our Library takes the number two spot followed closely by tyndale.com – the web site for Tyndale House Publishers. Fourth spot is taken with the Wikipedia article about William Tyndale – the person our school was named after.

We have worked hard to accomplish this goal and are very pleased with the results. Here are some of the things (in no particular order) I think have contributed to this success.

a) Tyndale web site search is powered by Google. Google provides this service to Universities for free. We have used this service for a number of years. It provides us with great search results and it also means that Google will index our site on a regular basis.

b) “Google loves blogs” – I have heard this phrase thrown around the web for a couple of years now – not sure where I first heard it but I am convinced it is true. Blogs tend to be in continual change with new content added on a regular basis. They are also full of archived information. As the Tyndale community starts posting more blogs we will see the value of our domain rise in Google’s eyes.

c) Site architecture and code design – Yah this may seem really boring to most out there but I believe it holds some validity. Our site structure and code is designed in part to allow Google to easily index our site. We have a site map and clear text links to most of our site. The code is done with modern web standards and we have added valuable information to the footer of each of our web pages. Google automatically searches through (indexes) web sites with a simplified browser which ignores the pretty design elements and items like flash content – our site takes advantage of that process.

d) ChristianCareersCanada.com is a web site service that is operated by Tyndale at a separate domain. Each page on that site has links back to the Tyndale main site. This site dynamically hosts hundreds of career listings and resumes – each one of those pointing back to Tyndale.ca. The contents of this site is constantly changing which means – like a blog – Google likes it and gives value to those links. In fact ChristianCareersCanada.com shows up in the number 8 spot on a Google search for Tyndale!

e) Search engine submit service. We have been using the services of a search engine submitting company for several years now – they do not deal exclusively with only our Google results but I am sure the service has helped.

I am sure there are more reasons such as my charm and good looks – but the ones above I believe are the key factors. For me this is a success worth celebrating! If you have any comments or questions I would love to hear from you!