What We Love About OUTC

For the past two years, we’ve presented at the OmniUpdate User Training Conference. I have found that OUTC is an amazing opportunity for a community of marketers and engineers (aka webmasters) that all work on the same technology platform (OU Campus) to share, learn and network. Because they are all on the same CMS, they can go so much deeper into new features and functionality, as well as receive real hands on training.

Since I’m not a developer, my favorite part of the conference is the first two days when broader concepts and best practices are presented. Below are a few examples of sessions from this year’s conference.

• The Insider’s Guide to Blogging: Strategy and Best Practices for Higher Ed
• Using Analytics to Measure Results and Improve Content
• Going Responsive: Is a Redesign Really Necessary?
• SEO: How to Use Everyday Techniques to Increase Website Traffic
• Creating Effective Landing Pages to Support Email Campaigns and Improve Engagement

We were happy to co-present with Georgia Regents University about the information architecture process. The presentation started with an overview of the three main components of IA. These included content strategy, site map and page schematics.

The rest of the presentation focused on how to be STRATEGIC in developing your IA. We showed specific examples of how GRU’s goals and strategies guided specific IA decisions in the content strategy, site map and page schematics (show image of these 3 from the presentation). Additionally, we offered up several best practices in higher education IA.

We’ve found that the most successful (and fun) presentations involve quizzes and giveaways. The attendees that remembered some of the best practices in the presentation were rewarded with a VisionPoint tee.

If you’d like to learn more about these higher ed IA best practices or find out how your goals and strategies should inform your IA decisions, just let us know…we are happy to share.