Mobile has momentum. The statistics concerning the rise of mobile adoption and usage are staggering. Forbes recently published estimates that there will be more than 7 billion 802.11n devices in the market by 2015 and that tablet adoption in the enterprise is growing by 50% annually. Mobile needs to be factored significantly into higher education marketing strategy as the following infographic from http://www.vertic.com/blog/year_of_the_enterprise_tablet_infographic/ demonstrates:

So, what are the three most important things that colleges and universities need to know and do right now?

1.)   Identify the extent to which users visit your site using mobile devices.  Using Google Analytics, you can identify your traffic by source and device type. This is critical because you need to know how many users access your site from iphones, ipads, android phones, etc. Seeing these statistics and trends will inform your web site design and content strategy.

2.)   Optimize for mobile based on your analytics data and your goals. Is your main web site goal for next year to increase applications? If so, study your analytics pertaining to this goal completion and determine which devices users are on throughout this funnel. If 40% of your prospective students use android devices to navigate your admissions web site, you need to make sure to optimize your site to make the user experience especially smooth for this cohort of users.

3.)   Measure continuously to determine and do more of what is working while eliminating what isn’t. Make sure that your Google Analytics goals are set up appropriately to reflect your overarching marketing goals. Then, make sure that you have set up dashboards and reports to capture your conversion information routinely and efficiently.