Matthew Sherlock, Ex Libris
In my last blog we saw how vitally important it is to quickly and easily update your university-related information in order to keep your students engaged.
With this in mind, how can you keep the content on your university app engaging and relevant?
Content on your university app can’t be an afterthought. It is the shop window to your services that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
1. Loosen the reigns — let content authors take ownership
Higher education is going through a period of digital transformation. Content on your university app can’t be an afterthought. It is the shop window to your services that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
However, many mobile app editors still require content authors to be proficient in HTLM, CSS and JavaScript. This means that the responsibility to manage this content often lies with IT Departments, who may struggle to manage timely updates in addition to their regular day-to-day job.
IT Departments are incredibly talented at what they do, but they don’t tend to be authors of public-facing content. Free your IT staff to do what they do best by putting your mobile app content into the hands of your student-facing departments and letting them lead the content creation revolution.
2. Keep it simple
If it’s difficult to update content on your campus app, that content will stagnate. Make sure that your university app needs no technical knowledge for content owners to create, edit and publish pages. In this way your app content will be as dynamic as the rest of your app. As Andrew Haywood of Leeds Trinity University explains, “Content authors have ‘day jobs’ and content won’t get updated if the process is difficult or time-consuming.”
3. Make content responsive & media-rich
It’s not enough to have factually correct information: your app needs to engage its audience. Your content needs to look great on any device, using responsive templates and integrating videos, images, and maps to make it more engaging and useful.Today’s students may even use the richness of your content to assess its reliability — as a recent report from Ofcom states, “Many younger respondents relied upon the presence of pictures or videos within an article to judge its truth.”
If you keep these three tips in mind when building and planning your university app, you can ensure that your app will remain relevant and useful for your students and can continue to provide them with engaging, up-to-date information.
March 28, 2019
