Meaghan Milliorn, UA Little Rock’s manager of social media and web communications, has received a coveted Red Stapler award during the HighEdWeb 2019 Conference Oct. 13-16 in Milwaukee.

The conference is held every year by the Higher Education Web Professionals Association, an international organization of professionals working to design, develop, manage, and map the future of digital in higher education. 

Milliorn received the Red Stapler award for giving the best of track presentation in the “Supporting Our Students” track. 

“You literally get a red stapler, and that serves as your trophy,” Milliorn said. “It’s a play on the red stapler from ‘Office Space,’ but it’s a coveted award. All of the winners go back and give their presentations a second time so the attendees have another chance to see the conference’s best presentations.” 

Milliorn’s presentation, “Amplify Your Academics: How We’re Creating a Win-Win Solution in a Decentralized Web Structure,” focused on the creation and launch of the university’s new marketing-focused academics website. The website was created at no cost to the university by the web team in the Office of Communications and Marketing, which includes Milliorn, user interface/user experience designer Ashi Franke, web analyst Toni Boyer Stewart, and front-end web developer Adam Spelbring.

“We had a consultant come to campus last year, and his report had some clear suggestions and recommendations,” Milliorn said. “We needed to do a better job at promoting our academic programs. We were not giving students what they were looking for, so we decided to create a whole new website that is about marketing our academics to prospective students and providing the information in a way that makes sense to them.” 

The new website has a consistent design with a landing page for each of the university’s more than 135 academic programs, with a link to the university’s online catalog as well as a section with career opportunities listing specific job titles and examples of potential employers who have hired UA Little Rock graduates with these majors.

“That really resonates with our students because they can picture themselves working at a specific place in the future,” Milliorn said. “There is also a simple form to submit a request for more information about each program.”

Since the website’s launch on Aug. 15, more than 600 students have submitted forms expressing interest in UA Little Rock’s academic programs. Between Aug. 16 and Oct. 4, there was a 448 percent increase in pageviews from the old academics website to the newly launched website. 

Milliorn, who has been invited to give her presentation virtually at the University of Massachusetts, said it’s been exciting to finally win a Red Stapler after attending the conference since 2011.

“I have seen many Red Stapler winners over the years,” she said. “They are great speakers, and I really looked up to them. My goal was just to provide a meaningful session for people, but to win a Red Stapler was the cherry on top.”