Development

Websites

The expert web team at Stamats Catchfire builds both institutional and admissions-focused websites that preserve a strong foundation for your school’s digital presence. Through discovery, architecture, design, content development, template development, delivery, and support, the web development process allows us to have a clear understanding of your website users and campus constituents to create a site that appeals to target audiences and is easy to manage. We create your site in way that it can continue to evolve and grow to fit your target audiences’ needs, and the needs of your institution.

Mobile Sites

A good mobile site is not just about translating your institutional website from the desktop screen to the smartphone screen – it’s about creating entirely new, interactive experiences with your target audiences, at their most immediate point of engagement, their mobile phone. Our knowledgeable design and development team understands the mobile user experience and interface, leveraging new technologies such as HTML5 to create the best cross-browser, cross-platform, mobile-optimized experience.

Mobile Applications

Going native and developing a mobile application specifically for Android or iOS allows you and your institution to offer your target audiences a mobile experience that can really take advantage of all a smartphone and its operating system has to offer. Our development team understands the importance of creating highly aesthetic and functional native applications, and our creative processes include meticulous design and usability testing. This approach allows us to produce native applications that are designed and developed to engage your target audiences and drive measurable results.

Tablet Sites and Applications

In the past year we’ve all witnessed the “rise of the tablets.” What does your institution’s brand look like on an iPad? How does your website adjust to the tablet viewer experience? Much like a mobile site or application, your school’s digital brand must extend to the tablet user, in a way that is comfortable and intuitive for them. Our creative and development talent can recommend and help you translate your digital presence to the tablet, from tablet-optimized sites to native, tablet applications (iOS, Android).

Consulting & Strategy

Digital Assessment and Strategy

The digital assessment consists of a comprehensive audit of your existing online presence, including your website, any social and mobile media, and related print materials. This gives us a benchmark to shape your website, social and mobile media strategic plan. The digital assessment is presented as a comprehensive brief with actionable and measurable social media tactics designed to help you achieve your goals. The strategy blueprint organizes your entire approach to your digital presence, including objectives and tactics for achieving goals, a work flow for addressing feedback, and a plan for ongoing web participation. We also include a yearlong editorial calendar that outlines events, actions, roles, accountabilities, deliverables, and plans of action for managing your presence on the web.

Web Analytics

To improve the ROI on your digital presence, it’s crucial that your institution is measuring traffic and visitor behavior, and turning this data into actionable improvements. Our Google Analytics certified experts will create, develop and enrich analytics for your comprehensive online presence, strengthening your digital marketing initiatives and creating higher converting websites. We can help establish baselines for analytics and reporting to understand site performance and ways to improve.

Web Usability Testing

Prospective students, prospective faculty and staff, parents, donors, alumni, and community leaders use your site to find information and accomplish particular tasks. Usability testing puts you in their shoes to understand what is or isn’t working—including how easy it is to navigate, the initial perception of your university the site provides, whether or not visitors can complete particular tasks, and how all of these things work together to provide accessible information.

CMS Consultation

There are a multitude of Content Management Systems (CMSs) available at different price points. Whether you’re looking for an open-source or commercial product, Stamats Catchfire can take a look at your specific requirements and narrow the list of available CMSs to a handful of options that would work well with your institution. Stamats Catchfire works with all major CMS providers, and consider our clients’ individual campus needs to help make strategic recommendations about appropriate CMS platforms.

Search Engine Marketing

Search result order and online findability matters, especially if you aim to build brand awareness or bolster recruitment and fundraising. With several Individually-Qualified Google AdWords staff members, Stamats Catchfire is certified in providing you the best possible service in pay-per-click advertisement campaign management. Drawing on your institution’s advertising goals, our staff will strategize and deploy targeted ad campaigns on a variety of platforms to ensure that your desired audience sees your messages when the time is most opportune.

Social Advertising

As social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn continue to grow and evolve, so do their ad platforms. These platforms offer a variety of ad styles as well as narrow, demographic and location-based targeting. Drawing on your institution’s unique advertising goals, our staff will strategize and deploy targeted ad campaigns on a variety of social platforms to ensure that your desired audience sees your messages when the time is most opportune.

Digital Campaigns and Experiential Marketing

Whether you are seeking to launch a new program, grow online fan and follower engagement, unify traditional marketing efforts, or develop a one-of-a-kind social media campaign, Stamats Catchfire has you covered. We approach such endeavors holistically and understand that no two digital campaigns are the same; from interactive microsites and custom Facebook development, to rich content and micromedia sharing, we start from the ground up, identifying goals to best engage your target market.

Community and Content Management

Community and content managers can be the host of your institution’s most important conversations with target audiences – part journalist, part PR, part customer service, part likable, part enthusiastic, part technologist, and part brand evangelist, community management roles in higher education are not easily configured inside most institutions currently. Stamats Catchfire will help you craft the right messages, engage your target audiences, nurture your digital communities, as well as actively moderate and mitigate risks.

Training: Best Practices, Tools

Twitter and Facebook etiquette are not fantastical concepts—you must be prepared to appropriately and effectively manage and measure the impact of your institution’s public image on the world’s most-visited websites. The Stamats Catchfire team offers personalized or group training in the areas of analytics, engagement strategy, social media management tools, and online media ethics.