1. 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)

My first recommendation would be for the very first visual you see on the homepage. On the website right now, there is a picture of the main campus that somewhat features the sports field, the parking lot, and the front of the building. This image is also covered by some text so when people come onto the website, they don’t even really get to see the entire image. To change this, I would suggest that they incorporate a drone video of the entire campus, including shots of the downtown, and Chatham campuses. This way people who come to St. Clair’s website are going to get the chance to see more of what the campus looks like and has to offer and it may become more interesting to someone. Using a video for the main visual content on the homepage will help the websites engagement. If people see a video of something they are naturally going to be drawn to the movement so this will catch their attention and make them stay on the website longer. I think especially for local domestic students it's important to showcase what the campuses look like and have to offer. So giving them an overview of the sportsplex, inside views of the main, downtown, and Chatham campuses as well as the scenery around them is very important. People are naturally curious as to what things look like and will usually get excited if they see something that sticks out to them. From personal experience, when I looked into this program and it said it was located at the downtown campus, I had no idea that St. Clair even had anything downtown and I have been living in Windsor/Essex county my whole life. So, I would have wished that I got to see a little bit of video footage of St. Clair downtown right on the homepage of the website so I could familiarize myself. The video on the homepage doesn’t have to be a super long video of a full tour but we could put a link below that people could click and it would bring them right to a YouTube video of the entire drone tour video of the campuses.

Another recommendation would be to feature more visuals of students attending the school. On the website there aren’t many images of students at the school which doesn’t give a good representation of who we are. We want students to come to St. Clair and be able to picture themselves going here, but if they can’t see any representation of themselves on the website how are they supposed to feel connected to the school. The school’s sports website is the only website that does a good job at incorporating real images and videos of the students at St. Clair and that’s what the main website needs to be doing. Showing students in the classrooms, walking, studying, working out, etc. these are all things that students would be doing so I think showcasing the real-life of a student at St. Clair will humanize the website more. When people see this they will be able to relate more, feel connected, and engage some emotions in them. These images can make incoming students feel more welcomed and gets them excited about all the possibilities at the college, helping them be able to envision their St. Clair experience. With these student visuals we can also show the diversity of the school and how we promote inclusivity, making everyone who comes to the website feel like they can picture themselves here. St Clair needs to be targeting to a large audience which should focus a lot on the students, which is why I would recommend many more visuals of real St Clair students living their lives and being present on the campus. This way we can gain more emotional connection and hope new incoming students picture their future here at St. Clair.

My last recommendation also has to do with focusing on the visuals of the students at St. Clair but more specifically having short clips or just images of current students, alumni, or maybe even some of the teachers. There could be a section on the website that features different students who introduce themselves and give some background information on the program they are in or were in. If they are alumni then they could talk about the success the program has got them once they left school. I think short little videos would do best because then the students don’t have to read a description of someone, which will be better for their attention span. This could improve their engagement on the website because once they view a video of a student who just talked about a specific program, it may peak their interest and they may want to look into that program on the website, which keeps them on the website longer and increases their chance at applying to St. Clair. Doing a visual like this can also give incoming students the chance to see real students in these programs and get their experience so hopefully they can picture their own future experience. Another benefit with doing this and targeting to incoming local domestic students would be the chance of someone possibly recognizing a student on the website. They could’ve went to high school with them, maybe a long-time friend, or relative. When they see someone they know they will make a connection and maybe even try to reach out to them to learn more about whatever program the student on the website took. With this type of visual there is a better chance at being able to spark a connection, emotion and memory because we are focusing on real students stories at St. Clair. In class we have viewed the St. Clair Advertising program website and this website features videos of real students telling their stories about the program. This is exactly what I think the main website for St. Clair should be doing because it is a great why for incoming students to learn more about each program without having to go and read a lot of content regarding someone’s story.