- Include more images of students using the facilities and having fun.
I would recommend including high-quality images of students actively engaged in classrooms, labs, and common areas, as well as participating in extracurricular activities and social events. The visuals should feature friends having fun to show prospective students what the experiences at St. Clair College look like, since they want to see real experiences before choosing a college. The goal of these images is to create a sense of community and showcase the supportive learning environment, and make the campus feel welcoming and relatable.
The images by itself will show the potential incoming domestic students that the college is a vibrant and engaging place where they can learn and build lifelong friendships, no other text will be necessary to convey the message. 40 percent of consumers respond better to visual information than text alone (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 16), so by seeing real students enjoying their time on campus, prospective applicants can visualize themselves in that environment, having fun with friends and enjoying the college’s facilities, making St. Clair College feel more like a place they belong rather than just an institution.
- More images of the athletic facilities
The college invested over $70 million in the athletic facilities, so I recommend including more high-quality visuals of the SportsPark, the SportsPlex, and the Tennis Centre, and images of students and varsity athletes using them to show that it is free for students to use and to showcase the college’s commitment to supporting student health, fitness, and overall well-being.
These images will help draw prospective students who are interested in sports, fitness, or recreation. The website can say how much the facilities costed and how nice they are but it will never have the same impact of showing photos of them, since people can interpret images in less than 1/10 of a second (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 8).
Not many people know that the facilities are also available to all of the students, most of them don’t compete at the varsity level, but they are still interested in staying active through fitness, intramural sports, and social activities, so by including photos of students using recreational spaces and having fun gives a sense that the college provides opportunities for both competitive athletes and those looking to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
- Integrate Infographics to Present Program Outcomes and Career Paths
A lot of the course pages have statistics about graduates, but visuals have been found to improve learning by up to 400 percent (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 11), and most people only read 28% of the words on a web page (Briscoe, W9 - B - The Power of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 7), so the statistics won't be as impactful as it would be with an infographic.
Potential students look for concrete evidence that the program they’re interested in will lead to career opportunities. Showcasing program-specific statistics with an infographic such as the percentage of graduates employed within six months, can help inform their decision-making. They are more likely to trust easily digestible, visual data compared to long paragraphs of text. Infographics break down the data into bite-sized, easily scannable visuals, making the information more engaging and accessible. They can also capture a reader's attention more quickly than paragraphs of text, increasing the chances that the student will explore the program further.
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