October 1, 2013

Tips and strategies for thank you screens in higher education: examples and commentary

Oct. 1, 2013 at 08:00 AM | By Jens Larson | Comment Count

It's hard to know if thank you screens matter in higher ed. After all, it's the end of the website user's task (requesting information, applying, confirming admission, etc.), which suggests that prospies probably aren't all that interested in a thank you screen.

At the same time, it's one of the only common or core web pages that most prospies will visit, and it's often the last impression a prospie has before they leave your site.

A cursory online search suggests that few articles focus on thank you screens, and there wasn't much research inside the academic journals. In general, the advice is this, at least according to sites like Smashing: be polite, say thank you, and tell users what happens next.

When you think about it, however, you realize higher education thank you screens are bit tougher than traditional e-commerce thank you screens. Unlike websites for most commercial products, most college and university websites encourage very few repeat purchases and instead encourage elaborate research patterns coupled with a single purchase and multiple followups.

So where do colleges and universities have thank you screens in the enrollment process?

The inquiry. This is the beginning of the search process and is quite literally a request for more information. If that's the case, does more information belong on the thank you screen? (Yes, just not too much.)
The application. After application completion, the student feels relieved about one completed process (application) and stressed about another uncompleted process (admission). That thank you message should clearly be different.
The confirmation. This is more congratulatory than anything, but again, it ends one stressful process (admissions) and starts another (matriculation, move-in, and acclimatization).
Additionally, students at our institutions encounter other types of thank yous that seem a bit more pedestrian but that could still have bearing on recruit class size, yield, and melt: newsletter signups, housing signup, portal registrations, class sign-up, scholarship applications, financial aid award acceptance, and more.

To see what was out there, I requested information from about 20 colleges and universities. This includes an arbitrary sampling of institutions from my neck of the woods as well as nine schools from the recently published list of "10 Best College Websites" by the Brick Factory . . .

Jens Larson is the manager of Student Communications Strategies at Eastern Washington Unviersity. His article originally featured on the U of Admissions Marketing blog. Click here to see Jens' "Tips and strategies for thank you screens in higher education" with live examples higher education websites use today.

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