Communicating with Multiple Stakeholders: Building Effective University Web Sites

Most organizations use their Web sites to communicate in some way with their stakeholders. For-profit companies use their Web sites to sell products and services, not-for-profit organizations use their Web sites to communicate with their constituencies and supporters. University Web sites have a more complex communications role. These sites must convey information to a broad range of constituencies, each of which has significantly different information needs. Further, universities have been slow to recognize the need for a comprehensive high-level strategy for managing the design and implementation of their Web sites. This paper offers an analysis of the issues universities face in designing and implementing their Web sites and presents some solutions to problems that universities face in these undertakings.