Adrian is the first college to have a mobile tool that uses Facebook to both track leads, and share campus content. Adrian College Mobile combines important mobile features like fast load times, cross-device accessibility, and most importantly, it remains an attractive media-sharing and marketing tool.
Whether you say web-app, or mobile website, Adrian College Mobile works in any web browser, a feature that device-specific "apps" can't boast about. It allows people who are on-the-go to read more about Adrian College, interact with Facebook, read news stories, view events, or locate and call the campus.
User Interface
Mobile web interfaces require a very high attention to detail. We focus on bringing the important content to the user in the fastest and most effective way possible. Easy navigation, and a simple story layout, allows for immersive, yet informative browsing. We also use layout techniques to deliver the same interface to all devices, a rare approach in mobile web-apps.
Simple Article Layout
Upcoming Events
Interact Centric Design
Easy Contact Methods
Speed
Getting content to load fast is hard, especially over a cellular network. We use several optimization techniques, including daily resource syncing, to significantly decrease load times. Making pages load fast in the mobile space is a challenge that we understand, and make strategies for.
Front-End In order to increase speed, and for a better user experience, we use very few images in the interface. We use device feature detection, along with new-age techniques like font-face embedded icons, text-based logos, and full CSS Facebook buttons.
Back-End By localizing some of the media content to a same-server database, we are able to cut out the lag associated with third-party services, and retrieve data nearly instantaneously.
With over 200 million active mobile users, Facebook is the best way to integrate social interaction on a mobile device. Adrian College Mobile has it's own app on Facebook, which allows the mobile site to retrieve information, and post content for signed-in users.
One Click Login
The one-click login feature for Facebook users is brand new, and we developed our own mobile-friendly, extremely speedy, and highly compatible method to bring this feature to Adrian College Mobile users.
Simple Social Sharing
Making content viral is just one click away. Once the story becomes social, user engagement, community awareness, and dialogue is created.
Contact and Visit Requests
Logging in with an email or Facebook account makes getting more information, or scheduling a visit just a tap away.
Making this a simple process is important for capturing leads, and provides a transparent method for prospective students to begin their engagement with the college.
This is one of the first tools for a college to integrate Facebook into the admissions workflow.
Moving away from print-based marketing, and arduous lead capture methods is where the future is going, and why we are here.
App Track
Getting people to log into the mobile web-app, and interact with it, means nothing if the college can't manage or track it.
Adrian College Mobile communicates with App Track, a web application we built for tracking social leads.
App Track provides a simple way to check off leads the admissions team has followed-up with, view story sharing, and export important data that is gathered every time someone visits the mobile site.
·Live Stats
Facebook & Email Logins
Facebook Users
Facebook Shares
WordPress
The first step in our mobile project was to outfit the full Adrian College website with Wordpress, a popular content management system (CMS). News stories are now published through the web, with a highly collaborative, and simple tool. Stories on the mobile site come directly from the Wordpress feed, making them real-time.
WordPress
Adrian College uses Google Apps to handle many things, including their campus calendar. In an effort to reduce any type of redundancy, we tap directly into Google Apps to display events on the mobile site. A goal of any web-app is to make it run by itself, and using third party services like Google Apps makes this easy.
Full Site
Mobile Site
Flickr
Flickr is one of the best photo sharing tools on the web, and when it comes to creating galleries, and getting photos fast, it beats all other services. We integrate with Flickr so Adrian College can easily manage their galleries, and re-arrange the ordering of photos with a drag-and-drop interface.
Also, Flickr does most of the photo optimization for us, providing mobile-friendly photos, with great quality, at an unrivaled speed.
The Result
Adrian College Mobile breaks ground when it comes to educational institutions embracing new-age technology, and the social revolution. This tool not only streamlines campus marketing, but gives students something they can identify with and be proud of, making it an important retention tool.
View it today on your mobile device: