Author disclaimer: I played a supporting research and conceptual role in producing the virtual tour discussed in the second half of this post.

The aesthetics of school, college, and university websites are changing in positive ways. There is much more emphasis on clarity, ease of navigation, and simplicity. The bells and whistles, the flash animations, that we all paid so much attention to just a few years ago, are diminishing in importance.

One of my favorite recent sites, that of the Walker School in Atlanta, Georgia (designed by Silverpoint), has an elaborate homepage feature – a set of still images that open into short video clips at the click of the mouse. It is elegant and impressive. I’m sure that the Walker School administration is rightfully proud of it. Truth be told, however, the site would be just about as good without the elaborate video feature. The strength of the site is its clear design and navigation and the purpose-written text that runs throughout. In this day, one can’t imagine a family making as deliberate a decision as where to send their child to school based on a flashy feature. But they will be persuaded by helpful information thoughtfully and professionally presented.

One feature that will not go away from educational websites, especially not for colleges and universities, is the virtual tour. When you conduct research among high school students, they always mention the virtual tour. When they go to an institution’s website, what are they looking for? Among the top things is what the institution looks like.

If anything virtual tours are becoming more not less important. We all know how important campus visits are to the admissions process. Once a student has visited a campus, they are not going to care about a virtual tour on the school website. But two groups of growing importance to most universities are less likely to be visiting campus – the less affluent and students from overseas. We all know the challenges that schools face bringing students from modest backgrounds to campus. Most international students apply and enroll at American institutions without setting foot on the campus. For these two groups, as well as for the rank and file of applicants before they visit campus, the virtual tour is crucial.

That’s why I’m so excited about the virtual tour recently launched by Dickinson College. It is not particularly elaborate. Unlike more traditional tours, it is built on four themes that flow from the institution’s brand strategy. So it doesn’t just show students what the campus looks like, it uses the opportunity of the virtual tour to reenforce key institutional themes.

What is so exciting about this tour is that it was built on such a user-friendly content management system that the staff in the communications office was able to write and load all of the content with little effort and no technical expertise. If you spend a few minutes with the tour, you will see how rich in content it is. There are so many images and so much text that it’s unlikely a visitor will take in all of it. And the CMS is so easy to work with that the images and text can be changed, replaced, and updated as desired. The design is simple and effective enough that it maintains the all important brand image while individual photos and text nuggets can constantly change.

The price of the site was quite reasonable. And note – it doesn’t really have any bells and whistles. All it has is an intuitive and simple interface, a good concept, and clear design.

Every college and university should have a virtual tour like this. Not necessarily these particular themes. The themes and structure are a product of the brand strategy that is specific to Dickinson College. But something that is so straightforward, economical, engaging and easy to build and maintain. I’m betting on a two point jump in applications next year at Dickinson based on the virtual tour alone.  I know without question that this will be a boon to their international recruitment. In the meantime, it sure looks like the folks at Dickinson are having fun with their virtual tour. I’m proud to have played a supporting role in its development.