Study Suggests Room for Improving the College Brand

Back in February, the college contracted with Northern, the digital enterprise consultancy that helped create the sunyniagara.edu website, to conduct a brand validation study. Think of this as sort of a check-up to understand the SUNY Niagara brand’s health two years after its launch.

Northern conducted research through the late spring and summer. Here is the presentation — its 23 slides — summarizing findings, which lean into ideas for continued development of the college website:

​​SUNY Niagara – Creative Validation Findings – September 17, 2026​

Perhaps the headline is on slide 8: A Site Built for Everyone, Optimized for No One. Trying to serve internal and external audiences with one communication vehicle (in this case the website) makes it hard to satisfy either because their needs differ so much. Here are other key takeaways:

• Content quality could be more consistent. Common culprits are duplicated or outdated information, and dense institutional language that makes webpages difficult to read.
• The website’s visibility to artificial intelligence is increasing yet relatively low when measured against the colleges that set the benchmark for this.
• AI interprets the SUNY Niagara brand’s strengths consistent with how the college presents itself.

Northern recommends six priorities for a stronger digital presence. Three seem attainable, at least in part, over the short term:

1. Organize navigation and content around user questions, not internal structure.
2. Surface career outcomes, transfer data, and authentic student success stories.
3. Adopt plain language standards and establish a single source of truth.

Marketing and Communication is spending time on these. The office is consulting with the Faculty Senate Recruitment and Marketing Committee, and investigating ways to automate implementation of best practices for agentic visibility. Executive Council has heard a presentation about changes to site structure. Academic Affairs has partnered to retool program descriptions.

Beyond the brand validation study, it’s useful to remember that the college website doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Context shapes how people view it. With that in mind, here are some thoughts to keep in mind:

• It’s easy to conflate the website (www.sunyniagara.edu) with other online applications. Some, such as FYI, use totally separate software that website updates cannot improve. Others, such as the college catalog, though linked within the website, are built on platforms that were not designed to perform a marketing function.
• The absence of any contemporary internal communication platform may shape user perception about the website.
• The maintenance of college web content is decentralized. Unit-level agency experts are in charge of upkeep, and there are no standards for this.

All of this is to say that some website administration challenges are institutional rather than technical. That’s one reason why periodic reviews like brand validation studies are worthwhile, transparency about barriers that affect communication are important, and teamwork to overcome those barriers is essential.