#104 - Why College Websites Are Failing Prospective Students and How to Fix It
Featuring Pez Perry from Squiz
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SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Pez Perry (Robert Perry), Principal Consultant at Squiz. In this episode, Pez shares his expertise on why most higher education websites fail prospective students and what institutions need to do differently.
Pez discusses the fundamental disconnect between how universities organize their websites (around internal structures and stakeholder priorities) versus how prospective students actually search for information. He explains why the future of university websites looks more like ChatGPT than traditional navigation menus, and offers practical advice for making websites more user-centered.
Key Takeaways:
Most university websites are organized around internal departments and leadership priorities rather than user questions and needs.
Red flags of poor website design include president statements on the homepage, navigation by department names, heavy jargon, and homepage carousels with drone footage.
Prospective students don't understand university terminology like "provost," "dean," "bursar," or "vice chancellor."
The future of university websites is moving toward ChatGPT-style interfaces where users ask questions in natural language and receive immediate answers.
Gen Z students (your future applicants) already expect AI-powered, conversational interfaces in their daily lives.
University of Edinburgh embeds scholarship information directly on course pages, eliminating the need for students to navigate away to find financial aid details.
Monash University gives departments freedom to experiment with content within clear brand guidelines.
Universities are innovation hubs in research but surprisingly conservative in their digital communication strategies.
The quickest win: eliminate jargon, acronyms, and high readability levels from your website content.
Don't assume you know what students want—ask them through surveys, webinar registration questions, and intake forms.
Content should answer user questions first, then deliver brand messaging second.
Connect With Pez:
Resources Mentioned:
University of Edinburgh website: https://www.ed.ac.uk/
Monash University website: https://www.monash.edu/
Squiz: https://www.squiz.net/
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00:00:00:13 - 00:00:28:17
John Azoni
Well, here's the thing, folks. Universities are still structuring their websites and content around internal org charts and institutional priorities. But students don't care about any of that. So why are we still doing that? And what is the fix? Today we are diving into how universities can build digital experiences that actually serve what students need. And my guest from across the pond over in the UK is Robert Perry, who goes by the name of Pez Perry.
00:00:29:06 - 00:00:56:09
John Azoni
He's a UX and content strategist at Squiz who has spent more than a decade helping institutions understand audience content. And if you've kept up on the latest advice for SEO Geo, E-I-E-I-O, you've probably heard that your website should be an answer engine to adapt to how zero Click search is happening in 2026. And Pez is also beating that drum, and I'm excited for him to show us how it should or could be done.
00:00:56:17 - 00:01:12:06
John Azoni
And stay tuned till the end because towards the latter into the conversation, we look at two universities who are doing this really well. So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Perry. Perry. All right. Roberts, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.
00:01:13:09 - 00:01:15:13
Pez Perry
Just be here. Yeah. So having me on.
00:01:16:13 - 00:01:19:10
John Azoni
All right. And you go by Pez. Where is Pez come from?
00:01:20:09 - 00:01:40:00
Pez Perry
Well, it's it's very boring. It's. But it's just for my sitting because I'm a little bit Perry. Ever since I was at school, elementary school, and at secondary school, I just got copies. And then I went to university and there were people there from my school and they just carried on calling because I then my first job out of university, there was someone there who had been at university with me and they just call me Pez.
00:01:40:00 - 00:01:58:18
Pez Perry
So everyone just carried on doing it. I just can't get away from it. So I just I just embraced it now. So I just go everywhere. If keeping for my at my wedding, my wife and I had the policy papers on the table for everyone at the reception and they were all little Pez dispensers. So if we had to find somewhere, it would sell us 100 Pez dispensers.
00:01:58:18 - 00:02:02:09
Pez Perry
For what? Yeah. Aussies can't get away from it.
00:02:03:07 - 00:02:11:01
John Azoni
Okay, well, let's start off on a tangent here. What's what's something you've been sort of nerding out about lately? It could be personal or professional. You know.
00:02:11:10 - 00:02:42:14
Pez Perry
One of the things I've been really enjoying recently, which is maybe other people have encountered this in past as well. My kids are currently in it just started doing music gigs for the first time. So I've got I've got three kids, but my daughters and two daughters are in like concerns and orchestras and things like that. And this is the first year where there was like an end of year performance for Christmas, and it's just taken me right back to when I was doing that kind of thing because I looked at me as I was a proper band when I was at school in university, and it's just taken me right back to and I'm
00:02:42:14 - 00:02:58:20
Pez Perry
just loving like being back in that kind of environment and seeing the kids enjoying themselves and that kind of things. It's hard to like. It's not a great thing. I mean, it is. It's a validating, but it's just, yeah, I've been really, really enjoying that to see like how much they enjoy it and it's kind of making God that I really should be back into, that I should be doing that more myself.
00:02:59:02 - 00:03:01:21
Pez Perry
But, but yeah, that's the kind of thing I've been enjoying recently.
00:03:02:10 - 00:03:28:22
John Azoni
Yeah, it's fun when you start to see your kids enjoy the same things that you were enjoying. I experience that this weekend to I bought Tony Hawk's pro skater four for Nintendo Switch and I've been relearning how to play it. That's probably been 20 years since I played that game and my daughters are now obsessed with it too, and they're trying to get better high scores and stuff like that.
00:03:28:22 - 00:03:29:19
John Azoni
So it's been fun.
00:03:29:20 - 00:03:46:21
Pez Perry
Yep, yep, yep. That's exactly it with me as well. And it's all it's switched up again. It's all the old content of games I used to play. All bit like I feel like my guitar or any of the Zelda games are my if my kids are really getting into that now and I'm not forcing it on them, they want to enjoy it just because I used to enjoy it.
00:03:46:21 - 00:04:02:16
Pez Perry
But yeah, I love it. And Doctor Who as well, which is a big thing over in the UK. I don't think it's quite as much of a thing in the US, but the British sci fi series Doctor Who, I've got my older daughter in so that and yeah loving going through that with that and again I'm not forcing it but it's yeah.
00:04:03:00 - 00:04:14:23
John Azoni
Awesome Yeah my kids just I don't force it either they just love it like they watch all the old shows that I watch as a kid, you know, Full House Family Matters. I don't know if you have those had those shows growing up.
00:04:15:07 - 00:04:26:11
Pez Perry
But yeah, it's a similar thing here. Yeah. With all the old sitcoms, nobody old. For me, it's all they're like the fancy and sci fi things like trying to get them to show those kind of things and they seem to love it. If it's good content, people love it.
00:04:27:06 - 00:04:35:05
John Azoni
Yeah. All right. So give us a quick run through of your journey. You know, you're an airport communications gone content strategy. Now you work for Squiz.
00:04:35:20 - 00:05:01:04
Pez Perry
Yeah. So I've been following my career for about 20 years now. I try to work out exactly when I kind of joined and did my first kind of agency go, and it's probably about 20 years ago. So when I left university, I joined various different agencies in the challenges in the city that I'm in now. And I was working with like, you know, education organizations and local government of those kind of people in these sort of marketing and content agency roles.
00:05:01:17 - 00:05:21:21
Pez Perry
And then I had an opportunity to go and work for my local airport, which is Newcastle Airport in the north of England, and I ended up in charge of the website, in charge of email marketing, social media, that kind of thing at the airport. And I was there for several years and it was such an interesting environment, totally different to what I've been doing before and honestly totally different to what I've been since.
00:05:22:06 - 00:05:44:04
Pez Perry
But it's just it was such an interesting kind of place to work. And while I was there, I set up the social media for the airport. They haven't had me before. They didn't have a you know, the website was basically okay with all the social media stuff, was all brand new to them. And partly because I was quite young at the time, they just assumed that I would know about social media before I helped them get set up on it.
00:05:44:11 - 00:05:45:01
John Azoni
Of course.
00:05:45:08 - 00:06:05:02
Pez Perry
And I had a Yeah, of course, that's how I guess. But what I found really interesting was because this was social media in its infancy, there weren't that many people actually on social media. So I was able to, as the airports form a relationship with the people who were traveling to the airport, particularly the business travelers, the regular travelers.
00:06:05:10 - 00:06:29:03
Pez Perry
So I would then get to know who they were. And it was a very, very low tech form of personalization, basically just keeping a spreadsheet if it was regular travelers. I'm one of those people who was very impressed with how the airport was approaching communication with its customers and so on, actually tracked me down, found out who I was and offered me a job because she just liked the way that I was doing it and she wanted me to come and work for her.
00:06:29:03 - 00:06:57:23
Pez Perry
And that was Tracy playing in one of the clubs in strategy consultancy in the UK called Pick Your Communications. And then I went to her for 11 years and I left Ecuador in the summer just now, this year and get to work. The Swiss. That means I've spent the last 11 years working for a content strategy consultancy, very much focused on higher education, quite a lot of work based in the UK and Europe, but then doing a lot of work with other countries as well.
00:06:58:04 - 00:07:18:10
Pez Perry
But yeah, I just spent years now working with universities, schools, colleges, research institutes, anything like that, doing audience research and content strategy and essentially just trying to work out what what people want from those organizations and how best to get that information to them. And I say that's what that's what I've been doing for about ten or 11 years now.
00:07:18:10 - 00:07:28:16
Pez Perry
And then this summer, just doing Swiss would be very welcoming, very nice to me. And it means I get to carry on working with the universities, which is what I want to do. So yeah.
00:07:29:05 - 00:07:32:04
John Azoni
Yeah. Tell us about a little bit about Squiz for people who don't know.
00:07:33:02 - 00:07:52:07
Pez Perry
So it's always a dxp company. So they have a digital experience platform which is used by a lot of the universities around the world, mostly in Europe, in the UK and Australia, in particular. That's where they were founded, but also plenty of people using it in the States as well. And I think they are often seen as one of the smaller players.
00:07:52:07 - 00:08:17:08
Pez Perry
But I think the amount of customers they have within the sector is really, really interesting. So many people and so many different organizations using different aspects of what Squiz provides and they might be using the search platform or they might be using content management systems or something, but there's various different bits and pieces and it's just it's been really interesting to see how well respected they are within the industry.
00:08:17:18 - 00:08:29:23
Pez Perry
So yeah, it's been been great to kind of come onboard and kind of see what's going on. So I guess for more of a supplier side then an independent consultant. Yeah, Yeah. It's been an interesting and interesting switch.
00:08:30:21 - 00:08:49:03
John Azoni
And you work on well your world is websites and you know content for websites and you and when we talked and we had our pre-interview we had a great conversation about what's what's wrong with a lot of higher ed websites so paint the picture for us and then we'll go from there. We'll get into the meat of the episode here.
00:08:49:15 - 00:09:17:04
Pez Perry
Yeah. So I feel like I'm overly harsh at times in what I say, but university websites are doing it wrong. But what it essentially boils down to for me is that they're so essentially so, so tied to their own organizational structures and their own ways of thinking and kind of embedded kind of attitudes and so on that it's very the user, the person visiting the website who's coming to information, that's where they need to put first.
00:09:17:11 - 00:09:21:22
Pez Perry
And I know making a huge boot like this week, X gender like.
00:09:21:23 - 00:09:23:14
John Azoni
Every college website ever.
00:09:24:05 - 00:09:44:06
Pez Perry
Yeah every college I ever But it is you know and it's a bit of a cliche but cliches are around for a reason. You know, there's a grain of truth in them and that the websites are just not organized in a way that a user would want the information to appear when they come to them. So all really start to highlight, you know, these are the people in the university, this is how they think about things.
00:09:44:06 - 00:10:03:08
Pez Perry
And so that's how they're going to present information. But it's so rarely that they use it first. It's going to be used to sentence stuff comes much, much later. But let's focus on what we want to say this rather than what the user actually needs to find. And that's yeah, like I say, I'm making a sweeping generalizations. I know people listening to this.
00:10:03:09 - 00:10:16:13
Pez Perry
You go, Well, we don't do it that way. And I'm sure you know, and it's true, all people out there making very good quirkiness. But one I think even they would admit that they are pushing against, I guess, a tradition, a tide of history that we need to work against.
00:10:17:11 - 00:10:41:20
John Azoni
Yeah, the schools that I know of that have really well-designed websites from a user, you know, user experience perspective are the exception, I think, to the rule. And, you know, they're the ones kind of really going against the grain because a lot of higher ed websites just in general. I think it's a fair general generalization to say that they're often hard to navigate.
00:10:42:02 - 00:11:09:23
John Azoni
You know, they're often designed around the organization and what you know, what leadership wants to communicate less so with from an understanding of what a student is, is looking to find when they first land on your page. So what are the clearest signs that universities are you know, structuring their websites around internal needs instead of user intent? Like what are what are the markers of a site not designed for user intent?
00:11:09:23 - 00:11:32:18
Pez Perry
What are the biggest indicators is anything that has like the university president or the vice chancellor, any kind of kind of statement from them on the home page. When you land, that's that's always a big giveaway because it means they're very much thinking about powerful stakeholder within the university rather than what someone actually wants to see. But essentially it comes down to what you see when you get to the site.
00:11:32:23 - 00:11:58:06
Pez Perry
So if you've got those navigation menus, which there's going to be some baby standardized stuff across the top, that is stuff that's about us or is yes, our research section is on new section. These kind of things that you see as soon as you land, those are things that if in the audience of the university needs to see when they look, when they arrive, if you see anything on the website where it's clearly structured by those internal departments.
00:11:58:06 - 00:12:17:19
Pez Perry
So if it's got like the names of the different schools or faculties or departments within the organization as part of the menu, the navigation menus, those sort of big giveaways, and then it's a big thing as well, which is the language list so much tell a jargon, an internal abbreviations and acronyms and all that kind of stuff used in universities.
00:12:17:23 - 00:12:40:08
Pez Perry
And it's like within a university where people actually understand the context and know what we're talking about, that's probably okay. But if you see too much about on a website that's supposed to be public facing, that's supposed to attract people to the university, because we're talking about undergraduates, they don't know any of this stuff and too much of that is a real indicator that they just haven't been thinking about the student best.
00:12:40:20 - 00:13:08:19
Pez Perry
And also carousels on the home page. Like if you've got a carousel of various lovely, brilliant shots of a university campus, maybe like a video or something, but if that is all it takes up the landing page on the page, yes, that's often a bit of a give away. And I thought you did great work and brilliant university video is always welcome, but if that's the first in a city with nothing else on the page, yeah, that's off to to give away.
00:13:08:19 - 00:13:15:05
Pez Perry
But someone really wanted that picture of the university buildings there and not know how to use it best.
00:13:15:05 - 00:13:30:16
John Azoni
Well, I'm with you. I mean, you're preaching to the choir and that's one of my soapboxes that I stand on is like, let's get away from, you know, the drone footage of a of a campus, you know, and, you know, all the stuff that's just like, look at our you know, look at us, you know, And that's I think you need that.
00:13:30:16 - 00:13:51:08
John Azoni
Like, you need people do at some point want to experience what does this campus look like? What could it feel like to be on campus without actually flying there? But as the first, I think it's just a misunderstanding misaligned of what users need when they come to your to your home page that you probably have questions they want answered.
00:13:51:16 - 00:14:05:21
John Azoni
You know, maybe they're looking for very specific information. And it's great that, you know, you show that, you show that campus and here's here's some fancy buildings and things like that. But it's like it's not really like getting to the heart of what they're there to do that's there.
00:14:05:22 - 00:14:22:19
Pez Perry
No, it's not answering the questions. But those particularly when we're thinking about prospective students and that's you know, that's the reason why a university exists, is to teach students and a little bit key priorities that they have as well. But, you know, if it wasn't for the students, the university would be the best place to attract new students.
00:14:22:19 - 00:14:37:06
Pez Perry
You need to be able to answer those questions. And there's there's not many questions that are going to be answered by a sweeping down shots of the campus because a few very specific ones. But on the whole, that's not what's going to be what answers your questions.
00:14:37:22 - 00:15:05:23
John Azoni
Yeah, I think it's it's designed with great intentions. I think design digital experiences from the perspective that a prospective student is taking a very linear path to applying and enrolling, you know, so the first time they land on your website, they're like, I've never heard of this school before. What's it like? What's the vibe? You know? And then, you know, then they might want to know the next step and, and you know, now we're trying to get them to apply and stuff like that.
00:15:05:23 - 00:15:21:04
John Azoni
But people are coming from all different angles and you can't it's like a one size fits all website that's assuming that the first thing they want to see is what your buildings look like from the sky. Yeah. You know, is, is the wrong thing.
00:15:21:13 - 00:15:43:08
Pez Perry
Yeah. You know, universities do have some magnificent buildings. You know, we've got universities here in the UK, but hundreds and hundreds of years old and they have an amazing visual presence. But like you say, that's not why somebody is on the site, particularly now, like the way that that decision about where to go to university has changed over time.
00:15:43:17 - 00:16:02:16
Pez Perry
But they're going to know so much about you before they come to the website. Now, they've done research. They've narrowed down some of their options and coming to the university website now to get, you know, to validate some of the stuff they found elsewhere. What's it like they're doing? They're doing it by check on you really? Like, do you match up to what their respective options are now?
00:16:02:16 - 00:16:23:14
Pez Perry
And if you can't address the questions they're coming to you with, then it's going to be they're going to take you off that list again. They're going to go back and start doing some research on someone else. So yeah, I think there's a there's a time and a place where it's really nice content. That kind of really creative stuff is really valuable, but not at this point.
00:16:23:16 - 00:16:25:15
Pez Perry
That's not always where it needs to be.
00:16:26:22 - 00:16:43:00
John Azoni
So I'm going to skip down my question list a little bit because you and I had a really interesting conversation about, you know, what a what a well-designed homepage could look like. I want to hear your thoughts on that. Like what? Because I think when people go to and I think about my website, too, I'm like my website's probably not good.
00:16:43:00 - 00:17:03:09
John Azoni
I mean, it's a it's a square Squarespace template. I just threw through it together, kind of like minimum viable project until I can afford a real web designer. That's not me. But I think a lot of people, when they go to make a website or, you know, that's just the default way of thinking about website is like, okay, menu bar at the top, here's all the landing pages we have.
00:17:04:02 - 00:17:13:00
John Azoni
Here's how someone's going to navigate to that. And it's going to be broken up by programs and things like that. So what would you suggest as a different way of approaching that?
00:17:13:21 - 00:17:46:23
Pez Perry
Well, I think one of the things that that drives my thoughts on this is the wave of user behavior has changed. So that kind of home page, that kind of website was probably perfectly fine five years ago. Like it is not that long since that kind of thing works really well. And I know I'm going to get complaints for people I work with and people I've worked with in the past to be keen on the idea of making sure you have good information, architecture and structure to your website and the content is in the right places and all of that is still really it.
00:17:46:23 - 00:18:18:13
Pez Perry
It's really important to make sure that people can find information on your site. But the reason people want to find that information is to answer their questions. And so I feel like we're moving towards a place now where what people expect for a website is the kind of experience that they get on something like Chat, Teepee, Tea or Gemini or whatever other a tool they might use where essentially they go and they ask a question and that question is answered for them within the way that they're using on the website.
00:18:18:13 - 00:18:40:21
Pez Perry
They're asking the questions and then it gives them a little bit of an answer and then maybe some more information to follow. The user can then kind of go through and ask more questions, or they can click on a link or they can watch a video or whatever, all of that stuff is still there. But that first way of understanding why people are even there in the first place is to allow them to tell me to ask a question and then you provide the answer to it.
00:18:41:05 - 00:18:57:17
Pez Perry
And I'm not saying this is going to be definitely the way it goes, but I do feel like that's the way we're leaning is to something where somebody lands on a page and there's an opportunity for the user to ask a question and to say, This is why I'm here. I'm looking for this information. Can you tell me about it?
00:18:57:17 - 00:19:21:16
Pez Perry
I want to do a course in. You know, I really like working with animals and I want to do a course that allows me to do that. Can you tell me what you got? Or they already decided that they want to come to you and now know what's it like to live on on the campus? Or what's the nightlife like in a local city, like that kind of thing, of being able to have those questions answered in the place that they come to and in a way that makes sense to them?
00:19:21:16 - 00:19:48:03
Pez Perry
That's the way it's going for me. So it's not about the navigation and the hierarchy within the content. It's just a way to answer the questions. And I feel like I don't know if we're going to get to the point of just having like a question and answer box on the home page and there's nothing else. I, I don't know if that's ever going to happen, but I feel like that's the way that user behavior is trending is that's the expectation that people have when they come to the site.
00:19:48:11 - 00:20:01:09
Pez Perry
Instead of having to do I'm going to put in a few keywords and then there's going to be some blue links and basically like that is on Google. But that's not what people want anymore. So yeah, I don't know if we're going to get to that, but I feel like that's what we need.
00:20:02:06 - 00:20:18:16
John Azoni
And when you when you presented that to me in our pre call, I was like, yes, I was like that. That would be great. That would be a great website if it worked, you know? Yeah. You get some like chat bots that, that don't quite they're not very smart. They don't, they don't really know how to chat with you.
00:20:19:00 - 00:20:58:04
John Azoni
They're maybe pre trained on some, you know, stock responses or something like that but like if a website operated like a chat GPT where it was really intuitive about, you know, showing you around, I think it's brilliant and that is totally a totally goes against every grain of you know thought that people have about making a website it's just is it would be so hard to get especially an industry like higher ed to get from where we are now just it's just a question and answer box but that might be you know that might be where we're heading and it might be 20 years before higher ed catches on to it.
00:20:58:04 - 00:21:00:17
John Azoni
But it's an interesting pitch as well.
00:21:01:01 - 00:21:23:13
Pez Perry
Which is where the irony of this is, of course, is the audience who is going to switch to this kind of behavior before anyone else is prospective students, because they, you know, the students who are going to start university in five years time are, what, 13 now? And so they're already doing this on whatever interactions they have online.
00:21:23:15 - 00:21:44:04
Pez Perry
They are just writing a question and getting an answer or they're speaking that question into some kind of whether it's if it's a Siri or whatever, and they're getting a question as a result. And that's how they are behaving. So I think if universities aren't prepared for this kind of switch, then I think it's going to be a big shock when it actually does happen.
00:21:44:04 - 00:22:11:10
Pez Perry
And that's the vast majority of people's interactions on their site is trying to ask a question and their onsite search is just spitting back a little connected responses. So yeah, yeah, that ability to adapt to it I think is always one of the difficulties for higher ed is have this we have this cycle every year of new young people coming through, and yet universities are not always ready to adapt to whatever is coming.
00:22:11:10 - 00:22:40:21
John Azoni
Yeah, and so one question I think people listening might have is the idea of a home page. That's just a question like a search or a chat box box or whatever might be too far fetched. Is there a middle ground between where a poorly organized site say that's organized around internal structures like like you mentioned? Is there a stepping stone between that and a fully AI powered question answer type of type of site?
00:22:40:21 - 00:22:44:02
John Azoni
Is there a home page that can kind of strike a balance?
00:22:44:19 - 00:23:05:05
Pez Perry
I mean, I think it's it's it's something like there's something that is more like the traditional one that where you still have you have links to your various important roles, the things that university thinks are important. You have your links to all those various ways. But one of the first things that people see wherever they land on the site is that's the other thing about this is that city nowadays, people don't always come in on the home page.
00:23:05:05 - 00:23:26:22
Pez Perry
They'll come in at like some random page six levels because that's but having that ability to interact with some kind of search function that gives them a response wherever they are. But then having the site almost learn from what those questions are. So the person is asked a question about what's it like to live in this particular city.
00:23:27:04 - 00:23:47:05
Pez Perry
So the site then knows that that's the kind of thing they're interested in and starts pushing them towards more of the content that has already been created, like not air generated stuff, but stuff that people who spent time in, you know, whether that's written consent, whether it's video, whether it's some kind of virtual tool that gives them more of an experience of what it's like to be there.
00:23:47:10 - 00:24:06:02
Pez Perry
But they've been presented with that content because of the kind of questions they've been asking previously. So all of that great stuff that the university content teams have created in the past is all still bad, is all still really valid, but it's being used to power a different way of engaging with it rather than it being So that's not total.
00:24:06:08 - 00:24:23:11
Pez Perry
Like we're only going to give you a Q&A option and it's not like we're not going to touch this, we're not going to go anywhere near A.I.. It's about blending the two together and giving people that experience. It really is all about, you know, they want to find this information out and you're just giving it to them in a way that they know what to use.
00:24:24:05 - 00:24:57:11
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah. And so I feel like what you're saying is, I mean, you know, ultimately if you peel back the curtain a little bit, I think what you're saying is, you know, that it's not so much about throwing out completely the current structure of a website, but understanding, I think, what people are coming there to learn, because what you said earlier, I think was really good of like if they if they get on a landing page and they just see like a statement from the president, like, I mean, I don't think I would care about anything the president has to say unless I'm already a student there and have met that person on campus or
00:24:57:11 - 00:25:16:23
John Azoni
something. You kind of see him around, because I know some presidents are really close, like, well ingrained into the culture of the campus. I know Bowling Green State University here in the States, their president, I don't remember his name, but he he does. He's like free coffee events and he'll buy everyone coffee at the at the campus Starbucks and chat with everybody and that's great.
00:25:16:23 - 00:25:37:21
John Azoni
I mean, that's but that's a long time from, you know, a prospective student who doesn't know much about your school and has these questions, too. Getting a free coffee from the from the president. You know, that's when you would care about the president. You know, it's not just when you're getting free coffee, but when you can actually have a relationship with the with the person and then what he or she says starts to make sense.
00:25:38:05 - 00:25:50:13
John Azoni
So I do think it is like getting away from structuring the content on your website based on what leadership wants to say versus how people actually use a website.
00:25:51:05 - 00:26:16:02
Pez Perry
That's it. And it's there's a combination of it being about what people what the leadership wants to say. So it's all those messages that are the almost part of what makes the university. The university is important, the strategic direction of university and plans of the university. People knowing what that kind of identity is, is quite important. But I think that's different from having a statement that says this is who we are and this is why you should care about this.
00:26:16:02 - 00:26:37:03
Pez Perry
They shouldn't. They don't care until they find the information they want. And I think getting them to that point is important because then you follow it up a little bit. Then the of the more university given messages can come in and explain like why why the university is so great. But until you've answered those questions, they've got no reason to be a I think that's that's the big that's often missing.
00:26:37:17 - 00:26:59:10
Pez Perry
One of the things that I come back to, but I have done some research on this in the past around what what students actually stand of a university before they go. You know, we talked before about that jargony technical language that we're so prone to using in universities, but there's so much that students just don't know about the whole process, about the experience of it all.
00:26:59:13 - 00:27:24:05
Pez Perry
And the so often that we within a university assume they do. And not being able to match that up is it can be a real difficulty. So even having it up in the name of the person in their title, the student doesn't necessarily know that the head of the university is called the President. And in the UK here we have vice chancellors of the presidents and that means nothing to anyone who's outside of university.
00:27:24:05 - 00:27:24:13
Pez Perry
Yeah.
00:27:25:03 - 00:27:29:04
John Azoni
Provosts and things like that. Yeah. Do you guys have a process there?
00:27:29:16 - 00:27:44:23
Pez Perry
Yes, we have Provost a dean. No one knows what a dean is, actually. You might have had them in high school in the States that don't know. But we yeah, in the UK we have them at universities. The first time you ever encountered Dean. Yeah, it's, it's crazy language.
00:27:45:20 - 00:28:11:07
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. And so for a content team to shift from pre deciding student needs to enabling discovery you know thinking about not so much the high level structure of the website, but thinking about the content that goes on the website like how should we, how should we be thinking about like how do we shift our brains to enabling discovery when we don't know what somebody wants to know.
00:28:11:22 - 00:28:36:08
Pez Perry
Was a couple of these couple of things and Chris Christie is actually is probably do know what they want because there are some basics that people want. When we come to the university website, we do know some of that. That kind of stuff doesn't tend to change how they apply the admission requirements that they have visiting courses. And that may be what their their graduate outcomes might be later in life, that kind of thing.
00:28:36:08 - 00:28:53:21
Pez Perry
To understand the things that we do tend to know. We might not know the specifics about what that individual person is looking for, but as a cohort you tend to know some of that stuff. But that would be the point where I would say that for anyone who wants to think about this in a different way is to think about what those questions are like.
00:28:53:21 - 00:29:14:01
Pez Perry
You've probably got inquiry data about what people are asking when they're sending an email to the university or the admissions team when they get a phone call or the financial support team. They probably have a whole load of stuff. These are the questions that people want to know the answers to and that is probably a really good starting point for thinking about how you might create content to address the now.
00:29:14:07 - 00:29:41:23
Pez Perry
What would you be doing that? But I think that's probably the place you want to start, is get as much of those kind of priority information addressed, because that will then allow you to to make sure that those people's needs are met and then you can sample in the nicest of Yeah, it kind of makes me think if, if people aren't ready for this kind of shift, I guess it makes me think about the people not being ready for social media when that changed, when that suddenly became a, you know, this is where people are going to get their information now.
00:29:41:23 - 00:30:04:19
Pez Perry
People are going on social media and they using social media to ask questions and get answers to it. And that's the same thing that's happening now. People are using different tools to do it. So I think just it's basically it's not a it's not just a fad. I don't think I think this is yeah, if if people were were thinking, you know, 50 years ago, I'm not going to bother with the social media thing because it's just going to go away.
00:30:05:06 - 00:30:08:13
Pez Perry
I think that's how we need to be thinking about this shift now.
00:30:08:13 - 00:30:26:01
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, I see a lot of content creation advice devices to make your website an answer machine. And I think that's I mean, just from what you're saying and from what I know about content creation and strategy is like at the very least, you can feed a website that might not be perfectly structured.
00:30:26:15 - 00:30:46:22
John Azoni
You can feed that website content that is answering those questions. And so maybe there's an F AQ page or, you know, different landing pages or something that, that talk about pricing or talk about, you know, the admissions process or whatever. And not only will that help the user experience on the website, but also for the people that are don't aren't actually going to jump on to your website.
00:30:46:22 - 00:30:57:20
John Azoni
They're still in charge. CBT you're giving chatbots or proxy or whatever else the content it needs to talk about you instead of the other school. You know.
00:30:58:18 - 00:31:18:08
Pez Perry
That's it. All of the content it needs to talk about you with some authority, but you feel you have some trust in yourself as an organization because that's the thing. If that content isn't there for something like complexity or attempting to teach a visit, then it'll try and get it somewhere else. So someone asked that question and you're not supplying the answer as an authoritative source.
00:31:18:08 - 00:31:36:21
Pez Perry
It'll go and get it for Reddit or some some other forum somewhere. That's not to say it will necessarily be gone, but you kind of want your stuff to be displayed that people are reading and you want to be the source of the questions about you. Because like you say, people may not ever come to your website, but you want to feel comfortable that they've got the correct information about you.
00:31:37:13 - 00:31:52:21
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. And then so one of the things you said in our pre-interview is that, you know, universities are hotbeds of research innovation, but they're so conservative in in digital communication. Like tell me about your your thoughts about that, because I agree with that.
00:31:53:12 - 00:32:19:07
Pez Perry
This is the the innovation paradox where we're like, you say, universities are filled with incredibly kind of forward thinking people like at the forefront of technological innovation or whether it's like, you know, philosophical revolutions or whatever. They're so out there in the way that they think about things. And they have to be they're pushing the boundaries. That's how like that's how developments get made.
00:32:19:07 - 00:32:41:21
Pez Perry
It's how research happens. But they're so reluctant to do that for websites or their own approach. I mean, I said before about social media, universities were not quick to jump on the idea of using social media as a way of communicating with old uses. They were much happier to sit there with the websites, sending out emails, you know, probably still doing advertising and print media, that kind of thing.
00:32:42:13 - 00:33:00:08
Pez Perry
And it all comes out to me. This comes down to a feeling that they're essentially bit chasing prestige, like universities are the ones that people think of. When you think of the university sector, you've got, you know, the Ivy League in the States and you've got Oxford and Cambridge and so on. And those are the names that people think of.
00:33:00:08 - 00:33:23:15
Pez Perry
And so that's what I think of when you think of a university, and that comes with this kind of feeling of, you know, we have to be like that. We have to be kind of old fashioned. And we're an institution that's been around for nearly a thousand years or whatever. Those are the kind of things I mean, we've got ones here that hundreds and hundreds of years old, I think Harvard, Yale and so on are older than the United States themselves.
00:33:23:21 - 00:33:46:02
Pez Perry
Like I said, an institution they existed before the country did. And that means that in their heads, when different thinking about this kind of thing, they're not thinking about them as like, we are so cutting edge technological institutions, even though that's the work that's going on, they're thinking of them as like old fashioned having a positive building style.
00:33:46:13 - 00:34:14:09
Pez Perry
That's what they've got in their heads. And so it's a real kind of cultural thing that makes it really hard to then do to bolster, particularly when it's visible to the outside world. Like if it's something that's going on in little laboratory somewhere and it might be pushing the boundaries and that's great. But when it's on the home page of a website and everyone around the world can see it, I think people get a little nervy and they get a bit reticent about pushing the boundaries like that.
00:34:15:03 - 00:34:26:04
John Azoni
Yeah. So is there a is there an institution that you've seen that that you feel like is maintaining that cutting edge or at least pushing in that direction that that we can look at as a model?
00:34:27:03 - 00:34:57:18
Pez Perry
I mean, I know more about what's going on here in the UK in terms of who's doing interesting things here and I think one of the ones to look at is is the University of Edinburgh, which is in Scotland, in the UK, and they are, they are one of these older ones. They own a very old university. So ironically they are the opposite of what I've just said in that they are they take a very users centered approach to the way they present their content on their website and they did have a they have a brilliant marketing team and marketing community across the institution.
00:34:58:02 - 00:35:18:14
Pez Perry
So we good at coming up with really interesting ways of communicating things. But what I find really interesting is they've done a lot of work on understanding our audiences by taking the time to kind of sit down and work with students and prospective students and work out how to make their course pages flow in a way that addresses user needs.
00:35:19:00 - 00:35:39:06
Pez Perry
They've worked out where the different points of difficulty are, where we like the ways of paying in the user journey, and then they've worked to address that. One of the things that I love about their site is they have scholarship information on kind of the best ways of clients that a student might get is kind of embedded on the course page.
00:35:39:12 - 00:35:57:01
Pez Perry
So the student goes, No. So based on like who the student is and the type, of course it is, it will show the kind of scholarships that they're eligible for while they're there on the course, rather than sending them off somewhere else to go find it. What you have to do with the finance team or you have to make some kind of general application for a scholarship and they really nail down that.
00:35:57:01 - 00:36:12:22
Pez Perry
That's what people want to know. They want to know how they get into the course, what they're going to study, and how they're going to afford it. And that just focused on that. And also the really generous in sharing all that kind of information. They've got a blog on their website where they talk through exactly what they've done and how they feel about it.
00:36:12:22 - 00:36:25:17
Pez Perry
And it's really it's really interesting to see that kind of approach taken. So as well as being very user focused, they're also thinking about of the universities and how they might benefit from taking that kind of approach. So it's a really it's worth a look.
00:36:25:17 - 00:36:49:02
John Azoni
And I'm I'm on their website and I on the undergraduate course page and I see they have a pop up that says take our five minute survey for the chance to win £50. Tell us what is the most important, what is most important to you when thinking about studying at university? And I'm like, okay, that's the stuff you've got to do to, you know, to to find out what people want to know.
00:36:49:13 - 00:37:09:00
Pez Perry
You absolutely do. And, you know, fair enough. I know I'm one of the people who, despite being an audience percentage and I wanted to find out what people think when they come to a website. I want the people who text giving and dismisses it because I want to get to my information. But you only need a small percentage of people coming to that site to fill out that form.
00:37:09:04 - 00:37:31:01
Pez Perry
And you have a wealth of information. And this is one of the things that I think people sometimes they sometimes miss this level of engagement with their audiences because particularly in universities, there's a tendency to think we've got loads of students here, we'll just go and ask them what they think. So they'll go to the students they have all day on campus, which is fine.
00:37:31:17 - 00:37:43:18
Pez Perry
But students are not prospective students. They have been through it already and they know too much about you already. So then be able to give you the information you need. So that's why you need to do things like asking them when it comes to the site. Yeah.
00:37:44:08 - 00:38:17:15
John Azoni
Yeah. And one of the things that I have had a lot of success with personally, with my business in finding out what people want to know is this is just one tactical thing that I tried and, and it works really well is having a webinar. And then in the registration you can ask a required question. And so I will always ask like, what's one problem with with content creation or strategy that you're having right now or whatever, no matter how the webinar goes, I've already got the most valuable thing, which is.
00:38:17:16 - 00:38:18:11
Pez Perry
Just the whole.
00:38:18:11 - 00:38:43:10
John Azoni
Spreadsheet of people telling me what their pain points are. And if you can put that in a natural point in the in the progression of a prospective student. So I know there are some colleges we work with do webinars, you know, four question answer sessions or something like that, or like a virtual tour or something like that. I mean, those are perfect to where you don't have to pull somebody out of what they were actually going there to do on the website.
00:38:43:23 - 00:38:49:11
John Azoni
But you're just asking them as they're going to do the thing that's there.
00:38:49:12 - 00:39:06:23
Pez Perry
That's exactly it. And yeah, you're not interrupting them in any way. It's just something that they were going to do anyway. And all you have to do is add a couple of extra fields to form and you just get so much valuable information. And I think that's another thing that universities do you talk about, which is not a user centered approach.
00:39:06:23 - 00:39:29:14
Pez Perry
They really want to know what they can find out about that. The students who are coming to do so, when somebody books a campus visit or an open day or wants to order a prospectus, they'll put a form in that has like 2025 fields to fill in before the person gets to what they need. Whereas if you just just turn that down a bit, just take it back to like, you know, just put you have four different fields on.
00:39:29:14 - 00:39:44:17
Pez Perry
Ask them later when they're further down to fellow, get like, get them more interested, get them to the open day, send them the prospectus and then ask them all information but don't like data behind 20 or 25 fields. Yeah, it's useful information, but it really slows down.
00:39:45:14 - 00:39:49:20
John Azoni
So one of the other universities you told me about earlier was is it Monash or Monash.
00:39:50:18 - 00:40:15:04
Pez Perry
Monash in, in Australia? So yeah, but a really interesting one. This is mainly a kind of behind the scenes thing that the website is still go check out website. But for them the thing that I find really interesting about them is they have a kind of they have a very decentralized approach to content that people around different parts of the university have kind of freedom to do what they want on their bit of the site, and that's pretty common in universities.
00:40:15:04 - 00:40:33:18
Pez Perry
Some people keep a really tight house in the center. That happens as well. It totally depends on the institution. But what they do is they give people the freedom to kind of experiment within their areas or their approach to content. So to come up with new ideas, try them out on the site. You know, they have a they have a content strategy.
00:40:33:18 - 00:40:55:02
Pez Perry
They have kind of a content operation processes and they have guidelines. And so they've got all these regulations in place. But that in a way gives people freedom to be a bit more experimental. So if they know what they know, what guidelines are, they know what the tone of voice should be, they know how the university likes to talk about itself or, you know, what kind of content goes on, what bits of the site.
00:40:55:02 - 00:41:12:09
Pez Perry
So feels when you write it all down. It probably looks quite restrictive, actually. That's the kind of thing that gives people a bit of freedom to to play and to experiment. Well, if you know this, if this is your brand, this is your little sandbox you've got to play in, and that gives them a bit of scope. And so they're going often, you know, this is what we're going to do.
00:41:12:09 - 00:41:31:17
Pez Perry
Now, we know we can't do that, but we can do this. We can get this, we can do this little bit. So being able to then like take the research pages and do something interesting or to experiment a bit with the student life section or something and just trying different things. But within that boundary, everyone knows what they're working towards and it means that the central team don't have to.
00:41:32:05 - 00:41:52:00
Pez Perry
They don't have to act like one place or, you know, they don't have to come down hard on anyone for setting up a WordPress page that they should have done because everyone's got that bit of freedom. So that's one of the ways that I think being able to be a bit like a bit bolder comes from giving people the guidelines to work within in the first place.
00:41:52:04 - 00:42:02:23
Pez Perry
And that's how we kind of push that. And having that, I can say, you know, don't be too restrictive, but they're giving people the walls within which they're supposed to operate.
00:42:03:17 - 00:42:30:16
John Azoni
Yeah, and I know we've had Heather MacBain from University of Edinburg on the podcast, maybe six, six or eight months ago, and I know even that we just talk about them, but they do a similar thing like they have. They are very much collaborative. They do these like learning events, you know, where you know, all the different, you know, brand or I forget what she calls refers to them as but something about like marketing partners or something like that.
00:42:30:20 - 00:42:45:01
John Azoni
Anyone that has like, you know, a stake in the outcome activities, you know, they, they all collaborate. They have like I think like, you know, Slack channels and they're all, you know, they're all kind of doing their own thing, but in a supported way from the central, you know, and.
00:42:45:19 - 00:43:06:03
Pez Perry
That's one of the things this yeah we see we do see that popping up more and more. And I think it's an acknowledgment of the fact that there are a lot of people working on marketing or content or communications in a university that is not my job. Like their job is not to be the content personal marketing person or the communications person for that faculty or that team or whatever.
00:43:06:03 - 00:43:30:21
Pez Perry
It's just that somebody has to be so well be. I don't know. It might be an academic, it might be amended faculty themselves. It might be Will it be opinion assistants in that in that office? And they're also just having to also get a social media account, and they probably need some help with that. And so the way that that had to edit with approaches, that is brilliant where you know, those resources are there for those people who don't feel that isn't necessarily a core part of their role, but it still has to be done.
00:43:31:07 - 00:43:34:05
Pez Perry
Yeah. So having all that guidance that that is really helpful.
00:43:35:00 - 00:43:51:18
John Azoni
And I notice I'm on Monash University's website and they, they do have a search bar like first thing you see is search for Qs and you can type in any sort of conversational question you have and then it will pull up. It's not a chat bot, but it will pull up all the different articles that they have about.
00:43:52:03 - 00:44:12:10
John Azoni
So I tested it out with like, how much does tuition cost? You know, it's given me a bunch of landing pages, articles, tuition fees, you know, fees if you're an international student fees, if you're studying, if you want to study abroad, you know, cost of living. So I think even that is a great step. The next step, you know.
00:44:12:20 - 00:44:32:22
Pez Perry
That's it. And it's giving people an opportunity to do it, to kind of say like, look, you've probably got a question. So announcing it with with normal search results and if you've got, you know, there's a whole lot of technical stuff going on behind the scenes to make sure that a search functions like it should. And there's a whole lot it like tagging and making sure the metadata is correct and all that, all this kind of thing which is always really, really important.
00:44:33:05 - 00:44:38:12
Pez Perry
But if you can make sure that those questions are answered, then yeah, but that's the key point with that.
00:44:39:06 - 00:44:51:08
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So if you take in this home for us, if marketing teams could fix one thing tomorrow to to make the biggest impact, what what should it be?
00:44:51:08 - 00:45:15:03
Pez Perry
I think one of the biggest things is getting rid of all that jargon on the websites. As you know, that's not one simple fix on a web that's totally taking the question away. But I think we put up so many barriers to to people engaging with us in various different ways. But I think one of the biggest ones is just being able to be understood by the people who are trying to get information out of us.
00:45:15:10 - 00:45:34:06
Pez Perry
So that talks about having like a search box that answers people's questions. In order to do that kind of thing, you're going to need content that is understood by the people who are going to end up reading it. And whether that is easy or whether it is the individual who's coming to ask the questions, you can't use the jargon.
00:45:34:06 - 00:45:54:05
Pez Perry
We can't use our own internal language. Probably need to make sure that the readability level of the content on our website is is lower than it is at the moment. I think there's a huge assumption within university settings that, oh, someone's coming to the website, yeah, we can have a really good level of like 16, 17, 18 because that's the age they are when they come.
00:45:54:14 - 00:46:12:11
Pez Perry
But nobody wants to be constantly reading like quite a high level at this age. So, you know, but you know, we're doing English literature in America in school. You don't want to be reading the equivalent of Moby Dick or whatever. When you come to a university website, you want it to be lower than that. You want it to be as easy as possible.
00:46:12:11 - 00:46:25:02
Pez Perry
So that would be my thing is the language, it's the jargon, it's the acronyms. And it's very the level at which we expect people to be able to engage with our content. So if that is a one quick fix tomorrow.
00:46:25:17 - 00:46:42:10
John Azoni
But yeah, maybe not a quick fix, but, but it's very tactical. You know, it's very it's very much yes, I think everyone can agree that. I think, you know, if you were to, you know, present to leadership that, hey, we need to get rid of all these acronyms, I assume that people would that leadership would be like, yeah, that makes sense.
00:46:42:10 - 00:46:50:19
John Azoni
You know, like, I feel like I would hope. Yeah, but it's at least a tactical thing that that people can work towards. Yes.
00:46:50:19 - 00:47:05:15
Pez Perry
But it's of economics was added the thing that sort of creeps in all the time. So it is is also one of the things that you can probably easily build up a glossary of the terms that we tend to use too much and then go through the site and make sure of it. I think it is like saying it's nice, it's nice and tactical, it is doable.
00:47:06:04 - 00:47:14:15
John Azoni
Yeah, cool. All right. Well, it's been a great conversation. I'm going to go make some changes to my website after right after I hang up the call.
00:47:15:06 - 00:47:18:17
Pez Perry
But what would you say? That search bar and nothing else? Yeah.
00:47:19:22 - 00:47:26:09
John Azoni
It'll just be like an AI version of me that just live answers questions when they tell you. Yes.
00:47:27:07 - 00:47:29:19
Pez Perry
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Django. Yeah.
00:47:29:20 - 00:47:38:07
John Azoni
Yeah. So what's one final word of wisdom or challenge that you want to leave our audience with to put a bow on this conversation?
00:47:39:01 - 00:47:55:14
Pez Perry
I think the thing that we've been talking about all through this is, is about questions, is about answering people's questions. And I think that's the thing that I would I would always come back to is making sure that you know what the questions are. So being able to understand who it is you're trying to talk to and what they want to get, hold on.
00:47:55:14 - 00:48:12:22
Pez Perry
Like, just don't be afraid to ask questions yourself in order to find out. I don't make assumptions about what they think they want. Find that stuff out. Ask you a questions in order to be able to answer this. And I think that's the that's the thing I want people to kind of take away is just think about those questions.
00:48:13:00 - 00:48:17:01
Pez Perry
Well, it's useless because there's just yeah, always think about questions.
00:48:17:20 - 00:48:20:17
John Azoni
Absolutely. Well, Pez, where can people connect with you?
00:48:21:04 - 00:48:37:08
Pez Perry
I am on LinkedIn a lot. I tend to use it a lot more now than I used to when we were all able to go on Twitter anymore. So I use it. I use it like I used to do out. So sometimes it's professionals to the times. It's just silly things that I think about. But yes, LinkedIn is probably my best place.
00:48:37:21 - 00:48:47:17
John Azoni
All right, awesome. Well, for our listeners, go follow Pez on LinkedIn and you'd have to search Robert Perry. But that's how I found you was a link and posts and got you on here.
00:48:47:17 - 00:48:49:21
Pez Perry
So yeah it's great Connect people.
00:48:50:07 - 00:49:09:09
John Azoni
Super great talking with you. Really insightful stuff about websites that I think is really helpful in the whole storytelling conversation. You know, storytelling is a lot about content creation, and content creation has to be going on to an effective platform and in order for it to do its job. So appreciate your thoughts. Yeah.
00:49:10:03 - 00:49:12:14
Pez Perry
No problem. It's been it's been great to chat. I loved it.
