3. Take a look at St. Clair Colleges website. In relation to visuals, what would you propose to St. Clair College to improve/enhance this new website to effectively market to potential incoming local domestic students.
Please provide three (3) recommendations and justify your answer with detailed reasoning. (9 Marks)
Implement more authentic student visual storytelling
Currently, St. Clair College’s website uses mostly generic stock photography and staged promotional images. While these are professional, they lack the authentic emotional connection that resonates with prospective students. The college should incorporate more genuine, documentary-style photography showing real students engaged in hands-on learning specific to Windsor campus facilities highlighting sports, the new facilities, etc. For example, these old “stock image looking photos” may resonate with a millennial or older but for these new generations coming in, these out of date materials are not going to cut it. According to the class materials, “pictures that are obviously stock photographs” and “generic graphics that display a clear lack of imagination” should be avoided in content design (Briscoe, Developing Internet Content, Slide 18). Instead, the college should use images that “represent actual objects, people, or places” and “bridge already learned materials with the unfamiliar” (Briscoe, Developing Internet Content, Slide 19). This approach would create stronger emotional connections with prospective students, helping them envision themselves on campus.
Create program-specific visuals
The current website organizes programs primarily through text-heavy navigation and descriptions. Given that “visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text” (Briscoe, W9-C-Importance of visuals, Slide 8), the college should reorganize program pages to lead with visual content that demonstrates career outcomes, learning environments, and student projects. Each program and USP should feature a visual journey showing the progression from classroom to career, highlighting connections to local Windsor-Essex employers. Now instead of having the St clair logo for the “our programs” it features our programs competition team. This approach leverages the finding that “visual memory is encoded in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, the same place where emotions are processed,” creating stronger emotional connections to possible future careers (Briscoe, W9-C-Importance of visuals, Slide 14). With “the average attention span [being] 2.8-8 seconds” (Briscoe, The Power of Visuals: 10 Facts You Need to Know, Slide 13), this visual-first approach would capture prospective students’ interest more effectively than text descriptions.
Develop data visualizations
The current website presents important data about graduate employment rates and student success primarily through text. Given that “infographics increase web traffic by an average of 12%” (Briscoe, The Power of Visuals: 10 Facts You Need to Know, Slide 5) and “40% of people respond better to visual info than plain text” (Briscoe, W9-C-Importance of visuals,, Slide 3), the college should transform this crucial data into compelling visualizations. Interactive graphics comparing program employment rates, salary expectations, and industry connections would make this information more digestible and impactful. This approach utilizes the principle that “visuals summarize content into smaller, and easier to process chunks” (Briscoe, W9-C-Importance of visuals, Slide 4) and would help prospective students and parents quickly understand the concrete value of a St. Clair education. Creating a dashboard-style visual presentation of success metrics would make the college’s strengths immediately apparent in ways that text descriptions cannot achieve.
An example of what I would change:
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