COVID-19 Info on Your Website: A Few Best Practices – Inside Higher Ed
It should be easy for visitors to find information about campus reopening and COVID-19 information from your homepage and on-site search.
A quick quiz: What’s the most important question people come to your website to answer right now?
I’ll bet it’s something like “What’s the status of COVID on campus now?” or maybe “What’s happening with returning to campus this fall?”
That was the big question in our house this summer. I lived with a student who was in exile from her college since March. Return to campus was top of mind for her, for us, for her friends and for their parents. Her college was pretty good in communicating directly, but we also checked its website regularly for updates, news about preparations for fall return and plans for testing, classes and other aspects of campus life. Now, we’re checking to see how the campus community is dealing with the pandemic: there’s good news so far!
Their communications model made a lot of sense: emails to students and parents shared specifics, but when you wanted the most up-to-date information, you went to a microsite aggregating content about campus reopening and updates about COVID-19. This one-stop shop served all kinds of stakeholders including community members, media and concerned alumni. Now it’s updated several times a week as new test results come in and status changes.