College students are an important target audience for many websites. They're young, they're about town, they spend whatever money they have (often online), and they frequently look for many different types of information. For sure, they're an online generation spending — or squandering — large amounts of time on the web.

This article is supported by the research study outlined below. While the initial findings laid a foundation for discussion of college students on the web, our understanding of young adults’ online activity has evolved since then. The content presented here has been thoroughly reevaluated and updated to include our most recent insights.

In This Article:

Our Research

To learn how students use websites, we conducted observational research with 43 students in 4 countries (Australia, Germany, the UK, and the USA). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 24 years and included 18 men and 25 women. Our test participants attended the following educational institutions:

  • Freie Universität Berlin
  • Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Miramar College
  • Mesa Community College
  • San Diego State University
  • Southwestern College
  • Thames Valley University
  • University of California, San Diego
  • University of London
  • University of Reading
  • University of Sydney
  • University of Wisconsin

We tested students studying a broad range of topics — including business, engineering, the humanities, medicine, and science — at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Most were full-time students, with a few part-timers.

Research Methods

We used two different research methods: user testing, and in-home recordings.

User Testing

The first method we used was user testing. We asked participants to perform tasks while thinking aloud. These tests were conducted as one-on-one sessions in a conference room with the study facilitator sitting next to the student. Sessions encompassed two types of tasks, open-ended tasks, and site-specific tasks.

Open-Ended Tasks

These activities were largely driven by the students. Users could go to any website(s) they wanted. Examples include:

  • Find out how to get a student visa.
  • Find application requirements for law school.

Site-Specific Tasks

We also asked students to go to predetermined websites and carry out a given task. Examples include:

  • There are many things to take care of for your new apartment, including turning on gas and power. Go to www.sdge.com to see what you need to do to get gas and electricity at your new apartment.
  • The following companies are participating in a job fair at your school next week. You want to learn more about them before you give them your resume. See if you can find interesting information about the companies. [Followed by a list of corporate sites.]
  • [On the university's site] Find out when the spring semester begins. Find the hours for the bookstore.

In-home Recordings

The second method we used was in-home recordings. Participants recorded all their online activities for two days using screen-recording software and sent us a hard drive with the resulting files. This approach gave us insight into the students' context of use.

The students tested 217 websites in all, ranging from Legoland to Lexmark. The total number included both sites we had chosen for the site-specific tasks and sites that the users decided to visit on their own.

Myths about Student Internet Use

Our research refuted two claims about student use of the internet.

Myth 1: Students Are Technology Wizards

Students are indeed comfortable with technology: it doesn't intimidate them the way it does some older users. But except for computer science and other engineering students, it's dangerous to assume that students are technology experts—or "digital natives," as they're sometimes called.

College students avoid website elements that they perceive as "unknown" for fear of wasting time. Students are busy and grant themselves little time on individual websites. They pass over areas that appear too difficult or cumbersome to use. If they don't perceive an immediate payoff for their efforts, they won't click on a link, fix an error, or read detailed instructions.

In particular, students don't like to learn new user interface styles. They prefer websites that employ well-known interaction patterns. If a site doesn't work in the expected manner, most students lose patience and leave rather than try to decode a difficult design.

Myth 2: Students Crave and Fancy Design

Students often appreciate videos, images, and animations, but they don't want to be blasted with motion and audio at all times.

One website started to play music automatically, but our student user immediately turned it off. She said, The website is very bad. It skips. It plays over itself. I don't want to hear that anymore.

Students often judge sites on how they look. But they usually prefer sites that look clean and simple rather than flashy and busy. One user said that websites should stick to simplicity in design, but not be old-fashioned. Clear menus, not too many flashy or moving things because it can be quite confusing.

Teenagers vs. College Students

Some of the myths this study refuted are similar to those refuted in our research on how teens use websites. It's tempting to assume that the guidelines for designing for teenagers would therefore apply to designing for college students — particularly since the youngest students are "teenagers," by virtue of having an age that ends in "teen."

However, for the purpose of usability studies and design guidelines, our definition of "teenager" encompasses only users aged 13–18. College students aged 18–24 are a different group that requires different guidelines because they exhibit different behaviors than the teens we've studied.

Play vs. Work

Teenagers prefer websites that have dynamic and engaging interactive activities, such as quizzes and games. They like sites to be "fun."

College students are much more goal-oriented. They like interactivity only when it serves a purpose and supports their current tasks. At the college level, users make a separation between play and work and don't require websites to entertain them at all times. Instead, students consider websites as tools. A good site is one that helps them quickly accomplish their goals.

Reading

Teenagers are poor readers and want sites to offer a substantial amount of content in pictorial form to free them from having to read. College students are strong readers and capable of dealing with more advanced writing. However, this doesn't mean that they like reading long texts. As with other higher-literacy adults, such as business professionals, students prefer websites that are easy to scan and don't intimidate them with a wall of gray text.

Here's what students had to say about such informational sites:

  • US National Science Foundation:  There is a lot of writing. This site is very overwhelming. It's really hard to find things that will benefit me. 
  • Wiley Interscience: I don't like that [the page] is really, really long, want to just focus on one thing.
  • BBC: Headings in long texts are good; break it up so you can read what you're interested in.

Although college students typically have high literacy skills, this isn't necessarily true of all 18–24 years-old users. Lacking a high school diploma or GED certificate, or not speaking English before starting school increases the likelihood that young adults have low literacy skills. Young adults with low literacy skills may have difficulty reading beyond simple sentence structures. Thus, if you're targeting all young adults (as opposed to students only), follow the guidelines for writing for a broad consumer audience.

Age-Appropriate Content

In usability studies with children, we found that content and interfaces must be narrowly targeted to very specific age groups. What's good for a 7-year old will seem too childish to an 8-year old.

Designing for college students doesn't require nearly that level of age-specific targeting, but it is important to write for young people. Both in terms of style and in terms of topics, students expect different coverage than would be appropriate for older audiences or seasoned business professionals. But don't force yourself to be hip. That doesn't pass the smell test. And do respect the fact that students are adults.

Corporate websites' careers areas should have a dedicated section labeled specifically for students if they want to attract interns or new graduates. Content targeted at young people makes them feel more welcome and open to browsing the site. Being too formal or featuring only senior positions has the opposite effect. For example, one student felt that a leading management consultancy's site "doesn't look like it's within reach of recent graduates."

Multitasking

Students usually kept many browser tabs open at the same time. When a site slowed them down, they'd usually switch to another tab and continue on another site. Such context switches removed users from the flow of using the first site. Thus, even in cases when they later returned, users had a harder time picking up where they had left off.

Student users’ high inclination to multitask and low patience reinforce the need for quick, responsive, and easy web design. Don’t give students even the smallest excuse to go elsewhere instead of staying with your site.

When students "multitask," they don't do so in the true sense of doing several things simultaneously. Rather, they perform frequent context-switches between various on-going tasks, but work on only a single website at any given time.

No International Differences

We tested in 4 countries on 3 continents, and many of the students were born in still other countries on other continents. No differences in usability findings. Students are the same everywhere in terms of the main Web design guidelines.

Of course, there are language differences, so a localized design remains superior to having a single, worldwide site.

Students coming from foreign countries are usually not native-language speakers. This means that they require simpler language than locally-born users. In particular, it's important to avoid jargon, complex words and sentence structures, and puns and colloquialisms.

Social Media

In the research study supporting this article, detailed above, we found that students would turn to search engines to find an organization’s official website whenever they wanted to learn more about a company. However, recent research shows that people will use social media as their primary channel if they find it more efficient than the alternatives. Our new research on social media UX gave us more insight into how people use social media platforms when seeking information.

Social Media’s Growing Role

Nowadays, college students are perpetually online. Research from Pew Research Center indicates that Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are especially common among adults under 30. Social media is ingrained into the lives of many students; they only need to reach into their pockets to access social apps instantly. As a result, students depend on social media for a broad range of tasks.

We recently conducted research on the UX of social media and found that people turn to social media to interact with businesses in many capacities, including:

  • Discovery. Users might unintentionally come across new products or companies through ads or suggested content while casually browsing, or they might actively search for new things via search bars and tags.
  • Research. When researching, users view content on the company’s account pages to understand how to use the product effectively.
  • Engagement. Users interact with a brand’s content through methods like liking, commenting, sharing, and participating in giveaways.
  • Purchasing. Users may buy a product directly through a social media platform’s in-app feature, or they might be guided to external websites to complete the transaction.
  • Support. When looking for support, users may take part in direct massaging or commenting on public posts to expedite responses from companies. Reaching out through social media may be faster than traditional customer service channels.
  • Promotion. Here, users share their positive experiences with brands and products by tagging friends, resharing posts, and sharing endorsements, thus amplifying the company’s visibility.

Today's students use social media as a primary or secondary channel rather than relying solely on company websites for all brand interaction.

Now that students are increasingly online, brands are leveraging their social channels to heighten awareness. According to GlobalWebIndex (GWI), the most common way Gen Z finds out about new products is through ads on social media, with 28% of respondents citing this as their primary source of discovery. Businesses aiming to engage with college students should prioritize their social media strategies to meet students where they are most active.

Full Reports

The full report on our user research with young adults with actionable website design guidelines is available for download. (Note that this report is now in a revised edition, incorporating additional user research with Millennials conducted after this article was written.)

Our Social Media UX report provides guidance on engaging with users through social media.

Our University Websites report contains even more evidence-based recommendations on how to improve college and university websites.

References

Auxier, B. and Anderson, M. 2021. Social Media Use in 2021. Pew Research Center. Available from: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/#fn-93044-1.

GlobalWebIndex. 2023. Brand Discovery on Social Media. [Online; accessed June 2024]. Available from: https://blog.gwi.com/marketing/brand-discovery/.