Higher Ed Websites in 2026: Key Trends and Priorities

Overall, higher education website redesigns are at an inflection point. Three historic pain points that used to drive "burn it down" redesigns have largely been resolved:

• Technology has stabilized. A CMS version reaching end-of-life no longer automatically forces a full redesign.
• Marketing owns the website. Information architecture, design, and content decisions are now typically led by marketing, web, or communications teams.
• There’s stronger alignment on external audiences. Stakeholders generally agree—or have conceded—that the main website is primarily a recruitment and brand tool.

With these issues settling, institutions can – and should – approach the website more like a product: something designed to evolve. That shift raises the stakes on foundational choices, because early decisions about content, governance, structure, and measurement will determine how well the site scales over time.

Content: The Core Pain Point

In the past, content writing and migration were often treated as problems to solve at the end of the project. Today, the best redesign conversations are starting—not ending—with content.

Most internal teams simply don’t have the capacity to manage large-scale content work while also maintaining day-to-day responsibilities. And in higher ed, content creates a unique operational challenge: without a clear owner who can run the writing process, make decisions, coordinate stakeholders, and review copy, launches slow down quickly.

To mitigate that reality, we recommend developing a practical content toolkit that helps up-skill campus writers and onboard contractors. Common components include:

• Content audit: review all content, followed by a meaningful reduction
• Content matrix: map the old site structure to the new page model
• Editorial templates: guidance for writing to new CMS templates and content types
• AI usage guidelines: how to use AI to improve and accelerate writing without sacrificing quality
• Training + practice workshops: build shared expectations and consistency

Even with a toolkit, many schools still need additional capacity. That’s why OHO developed Content Accelerator, a solution designed to manage and produce web content at scale. For teams facing aggressive deadlines, it helps ensure content work stays on track—and that the final copy actually activates the site’s content strategy.

Content: Budget Pressure Is Changing How Schools Scope and Plan

With tighter budget constraints, more institutions want to understand the total cost of a website project upfront: discovery, design, development, content writing, and content migration.

But without a thorough content inventory or audit, it’s hard to accurately assess, plan, and budget for the work that often becomes the critical path. In many redesigns, we typically recommend schools use this approach to evaluate their content and determine the "content migration lift" that will be required:

• A content inventory, supplemented with analytics, to identify what’s truly critical
• Automated migration plans for repeatable content like news, events, faculty profiles, and courses
• Manual migration plans for approximately 150–300 pages of high-priority marketing, admissions, and degree content

If you’re planning for a redesign, identifying the content that must be present at launch will make scoping and timeline conversations far more productive.

Governance: Defining your Authoritative Content

After years of unclear content ownership, more schools are choosing to define content governance upfront. The most important governance conversation is about authoritative content: who owns the core marketing, positioning, and academic content that represents the institution publicly.

With increased focus on recruitment and enrollment, institutions are recognizing that website content needs to meet – and exceed – user expectations. Once authoritative content is clearly defined, governance decisions become much easier, because roles, approvals, and standards can be built around what matters most.

CMS Replatforming: Fixing a Setup that Isn’t Working

Most institutions are already on a CMS that is a solid choice. Platforms we commonly see include Drupal, WordPress, Hannon Hill Cascade, Modern Campus CMS (formerly Omni CMS), TerminalFour, and occasionally Sitecore (learn more about selecting a CMS platform).

In our experience, the problem usually isn’t the CMS itself – it’s how it’s configured. Common issues include:

• Inflexible templates
• Limited shared content (leading to duplication and inconsistency)
• Weak or confusing publishing workflows
• Misaligned permission structures
• Too much custom code, creating risk and single points of failure

These problems need to be addressed. Sometimes that means a fresh build; other times, issues can be remediated. The key point is this: building on top of an inefficient setup often becomes more expensive over time, because teams rely on workarounds that slow publishing and increase maintenance risk.

Overall, three trends show up consistently: a desire for a better content publishing approach, a fresh foundation built with expansion in mind, and more structured content types that enable reuse and prepare content for AI ingestion.

SEO and AI Optimization: Moving Beyond Technical Fixes

Preparing a site for SEO—and increasingly for AI-driven discovery—is a top priority as schools work to increase visibility in third-party search and discovery engines.

Many redesign efforts begin with “fixing SEO,” starting with technical improvements like cleaner HTML structure, improved URL patterns, and better performance. Those are important foundations, and they should be addressed.

But technical fixes alone aren’t a strategy. Institutions also need clarity on what they want to rank for, which audiences matter most, and how to focus content on enrollment and program visibility.

We typically recommend a three-part SEO approach:

• Content marketing: articles related to your degrees with meaningful search volume, reaching prospects at the top of the funnel
• Program/degree optimization: ensuring degree pages rank for non-branded, generic terms to reach new prospects who don’t yet know your institution
• Branded search: helping mid-funnel prospects find the right transactional and admissions pages quickly

If you're ready to go deep on SEO, we've laid out our top SEO strategies and you can ready about our AI Visibility Scorecard to understand how to prepare your site content for AI.

AI Readiness: Preparing Content for Visibility and On-site Tools

As part of a redesign, it’s increasingly important to plan for AI content readiness in two ways.

First: How does your content appear in external AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude? Visibility in these tools is closely tied to strong SEO fundamentals—clear structure, authoritative content, and pages that systems can understand and reference.

Second: How is your content structured to support AI experiences on your own website? If you plan to implement AI chat or AI-powered search, the quality of those experiences will depend on how your content is modeled.

That makes structured content a critical consideration when selecting or reconfiguring your CMS. The system needs clearly defined content types that are consistently labeled and maintained. With that structure, content can be indexed, exported, and fed into on-site AI tools more reliably. Without it, AI experiences struggle to deliver accurate and trustworthy results.

Website Personalization: Relevance that Supports Enrollment

We’re seeing strong interest in personalization, especially as institutions look for ways to make websites more relevant to prospective students. That instinct is right: relevance matters, and thoughtful personalization can support movement through the admissions journey.

Start Small with Personalization

In our experience, the most effective personalization efforts are focused and measurable. Tools like OHO NextStep allow institutions to introduce personalized calls-to-action in ways that are clear, manageable, and tied to outcomes.

We’ve also supported broader personalization strategies for specific audiences, such as international students. These approaches require significant content investment—which can be a barrier for teams already struggling to maintain core content. Successful personalization depends on a clear strategy, a sustainable content model, and a measurement plan that accounts for long enrollment cycles.

Analytics: Shifting from Traffic to Impact

Analytics still matter, but the focus needs to shift. Time on site and bounce rate can be useful signals, but they don’t answer the more important question: is the website supporting enrollment?

We typically see two scenarios:

• Some institutions already have strong reporting structures and need to preserve them through a redesign. That requires auditing Google Analytics, validating key events, and intentionally carrying the setup forward.
• Others understand analytics are important but need help defining what to track and how to use the data effectively.

In both cases, OHO helps institutions build an analytics strategy that connects website activity to enrollment goals and measurable outcomes—so the site can demonstrate impact, not just report traffic.

Looking Ahead: Building Foundations that Scale

Taken together, these trends reflect a shift in how higher education websites need to be planned and supported. Long-term success is less about chasing the newest platform or feature and more about building the right foundations—content, structure, governance, and measurement—to support enrollment today and adapt to what comes next.

Institutions that address these realities early are better positioned to scale, evolve, and make their websites work harder over the long term.