Ripple Effects Interactive Featured in Leading Education Publication

January 20, 2005 -- Ripple Effects Interactive, a nationally ranked interactive marketing agency, is featured in the January/February issue of a leading higher education publication for the agency's expertise and insights into how to best use the Internet to reach and market to prospective students. Prominently highlighted in the article are Web site redesigns Ripple Effects Interactive completed for Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management.

The article, published in BizEd, examines how business schools are designing their Web sites to attract and inform potential students, while keeping current students and faculty up-to-date. While the magazine is geared towards business schools and those offering management education, the lessons apply to all institutions of higher education.

"Today 100 percent of people choosing a higher education institution will visit its Web site, so that site becomes a school's most powerful tool for outreach," said Louis Malafarina in the article. Malafarina is the chief executive officer of Ripple Effects Interactive.

According to the article, colleges and universities that successfully leverage the Web to recruit students understand that their Web sites have to be designed from a user-centric perspective. And given the abundance of information that schools have to offer to its audiences, many schools have turned to firms like Ripple Effects Interactive, which offers specialized expertise in information design and architecture, to help their sites reach a balance between simplicity and usefulness. This is essential because the central audience schools want to attract most - prospective students - are users who want to first experience the school visually before delving deeper, according to Professor James Ho at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Malafarina also spoke about how schools should differentiate themselves by using their sites to claim a position in the marketplace. Simply saying "we'll make you a leader" will not work. Malafarina also shared his observation that schools are showing a strong trend towards customer relationship management (CRM), which returns greater dividends for schools than other mediums. CRM enables colleges and universities to foster ongoing connections with prospective students from the moment they request an application, and increases the likelihood that an accepted student will choose to matriculate.

Ripple Effects Interactive has won several awards for its work on behalf of its higher education clients and has managed numerous full-scale redesign initiatives for prestigious institutions such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon and Cornell universities.

BizEd is a magazine for management education and business school leaders and stakeholders. The official print magazine of AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, BizEd covers trends, practices, ideas, issues and hard facts related to management education.

Ripple Effects Interactive is a premier digital marketing agency ranked among the nation's Top 50 interactive firms by Ad Age and MEDIA magazines. Offering a full range of services - from strategic communications planning, Web site design to online marketing and Web application development, the agency has built a solid reputation for creating highly sophisticated, imaginative and innovative communication strategies and Web experiences. From offices in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and with over 45 interactive marketing specialists, the agency serves a prestigious client roster of consumer & lifestyle, tourism and travel, higher education, and cultural & non-profit organizations - including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola. For more information, visit www.RippleEffectsInteractive.com.

Ripple Effects Interactive Featured in Leading Education Publication

4146 readers online...

Blog Information Profile for GunMuse

Ripple Effects Interactive Featured in Leading Education Publication

Search