No Laughing Matter (DeVry)

Historically, cartoons are not a significant driver of communications and marketing strategy in higher education.

But one cartoon -- by Randall Munroe, whose popular Web comic is known as xkcd -- has resonated so strongly in higher ed circles that it has some marketing officials taking a hard look at what experts still believe to be their strongest marketing asset: the institutional website’s home page.

The cartoon shows a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles -- one labeled "Things On The Front Page Of a University Website," and the other labeled "Things People Go To The Site Looking For."

The first circle contains: campus slide shows, alumni in the news, promotions for campus events, press releases, a statement of the school’s philosophy, a letter from the president, and a virtual tour. The second circle contains a list of faculty phone numbers, application forms, the campus address, the academic calendar, the campus police phone number, department/course listings, parking information, and a usable campus map.

The only piece of information common to both circles is, “full name of school.”

The punch line — that university website designers have no idea what their visitors actually want front and center — has hit close enough to home to create a lot of buzz elsewhere on the Web. According to the link-tracking site Bit.ly, the cartoon had been shared nearly 8,000 times, been “liked” nearly 7,500 times, and garnered more than 5,500 comments on Facebook as of Tuesday evening.

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