Note to Self: Measure Results

Michael Stoner joked that 11 or so years ago when he judged the national CASE awards for websites for the first time, he had to,

unplug the fax machine to dial in on a computer to view the one entry in the website category.

Over the past two days, we spent hours examining 33 institutional website submissions and 99 special purpose site entries. No surprise that, since 1996, the overall quality and impact of higher education websites is certainly much higher. Colleges and universities now get it - a school's website is the major communication asset.

Most interesting to me was the often missing description of outcomes on most of the submissions. The ability to measure results after the launch of a comprehensive, and often expense, web design/development project still eludes university web professionals. Very few entry forms included comprehensive and specific data on outcomes. Agenda item for re.web project team next week: what data do we need to capture pre-launch for reporting results a year from now?

posted by Susan Evans