Thanks Ranjit (and all)
A very timely article as demonstrating the value of institutional Web
sites was the discussed at Strathclyde University on Friday. Ranjit
and I were in agreement that we need to be able to respond in
financial terms and we need to be gathering evidence which can be
equated to financial value.
I've written a quick post on "University Web Sites Cost Money!"
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/university-web-sites-cost-money/
Note I suggest looking at the JISC Value For Money reports for 2006
and 2009 for ways of estimated ROI of networked services.
We also need to fight collectively, comrades.
Have to dash
Brian
Quoting Ranjit Sidhu <[log in to unmask]>:
> Hi All,
>
> And thanks for bringing this to my attention.
>
> Well, it has started-we knew this was coming-talked about this at
> the IWMW10 and again on Friday at the Scottish Web folk meeting.The
> similarity to the government web cull should not be missed-again the
> stats are out of context:
>
> Just to distribute my advice that has been asked by a couple of
> people of what specifically they can do:
>
> To take this seriously and communicate (ignoring is a dangerous
> strategy) that, as Claire mentioned, this survey is very limited and
> does not take into account the multifaceted role of the University
> Website, in particular:
>
> Marketing:
> The university website is an important revenue generator for
> universities. From our work with institutions I would make sure you
> emphasise the role the website has in bringing in international
> student revenue ( for examples see my slides at the IWMW10 ) as
> even simple estimations will blow these figures out of the water
> (revenue will be in the £millions) Also, the online use for research
> into PG courses (again big bucks).
>
> Savings
> Do quick estimations of the savings from online prospectus downloads
> and application forms etc... this will go close to covering these
> cost of redesigns (we would be looking at £100,000s over a year).
> Advantage of this is that they are very clear cut figures.
>
> Dissemination of information of current students and staff (cost of
> distribution)
> A look at the number of your current students and staff accessing
> the site will give a clear indication of the amount of information
> disseminated to different user groups. Instead of doing the cost
> per student as the article I would look at the cost per visit to the
> website of current student ie the cost of distributing information
> to current students- this will be far lower, give better context and
> will be lower than any offline costs.
>
> My advice is fight fire with fire: Revenue generation, savings and
> cost of distribution is a good start to putting context to these
> misleading figures.
>
> Sector Response
>
> Would be indeed wise (Brian ?), let me know if there is anything I
> can do to help (but obviously this is dependent on the individual
> organisation we work withs approval)
>
>
> Hope that helps I am working on a distributable presentation of
> Friday's talk of University Evidence for Their Value (strangely very
> relevant now!)
>
> Sid
>
>
> Ranjit Sidhu
> t: @rssidhu
> e: [log in to unmask]
> t: 07540094760
> http://www.sidspace.info
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 16 Nov 2010, at 10:20, Adrian Tribe wrote:
>
>> Amusing/interesting survey at http://is.gd/hcsx2.
>>
>> Questionable methodology methinks.
>>
>> Any other views?
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Adrian
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------
Brian Kelly
UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, BA2 7AY
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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