Digital Wave

The recent ® SMART Play sets announcement holds a great lesson for digital strategy.

Instead of throwing away the classic bricks people have loved for decades, LEGO simply added modern tech to bring those same familiar pieces to life.

Your website deserves that same approach. When traffic or enrollment drops, you don’t need to rebuild it from scratch. Your foundation usually isn’t broken — it’s just outdated or hidden under digital clutter.

Take your content, for example:
🧹 Cut the bloat: Clean up what isn't working and reorganize the rest around how students actually navigate today.
💬 Update, don't replace: Rewrite existing content using plain language, search terms, and questions prospective students are actually asking right now.

Sometimes the biggest impact doesn't come from starting over — it comes from taking the great content you already have and giving it a modern upgrade.

🎉 Big news!

Bruce Cronlund will lead a panel of higher education professionals at the American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education this November.

Together, they'll explore how colleges and universities are adapting their websites for the AI era, what it means to be AI-ready, and why it matters for the future of student engagement.

Stay tuned for more details!

🔗 Register here: https://www.ama.org/2026-ama-symposium-for-the-marketing-of-higher-education-individual-ticket/

✨ Today’s Feature Friday is Suzanna Au Yeung!

As our Proposal & Business Development Coordinator, Suzanna keeps our sales engine moving seamlessly behind the scenes. She tracks leads, filters complex RFPs, and coordinates internal input so that every proposal reflects the absolute best of our team’s voice and expertise.

When she isn’t wrangling proposals, Suzanna is a lifelong animal lover whose world revolves around her pets. Her current crew includes: Nari the cat, fluff ball Samoyed Appa, cherished memories of her childhood poodle, Dubbi, and a special-needs foster Samoyed, Mickey. When she’s not snuggling something furry, she’s likely hanging out with family or sharing joyful pet photos with the rest of us.

Suzanna, your organizational superpower helps us build digital foundations for the missions that matter most. We are so grateful to have you on our team! 💙

🤖 AI models read websites a lot like screen readers do.

This means they rely entirely on a clean, accessible digital structure rather than flashy visual design. By focusing on rock-solid semantic HTML and clear, human-centric language, you don't just build a better experience for your users — you build one that machines can actually find and trust. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel for the AI age; we just need to build the wheel correctly.

🔗 Check out our latest blog to learn exactly how we align web content for both humans and AI: https://www.digitalwave.com/2026/07/building-the-wheel-correctly-why-accessibility-is-paramount-to-ai-readiness/

4 Ways Web Accessibility Makes Your Site AI-Ready - Digital Wave Want your higher ed site in AI answers? Clean code, clear copy, and accessible UX are key. Here's how we build for humans and machines.

How’s your summer break going? Ours is great! 😎

But let’s be honest... even though the fall semester brings cooler weather, is the pressure already starting to snowball?

Don't let the upcoming rush freeze you in your tracks! We build digital foundations for what matters. Whether you need to prioritize web content, completely refresh your UI design, or update your accessibility compliance, we've got you covered.

Let's make sure prospective students don't ice you out this cycle. The fall rush is worth melting for—but your summer peace of mind is, too.

Let's chat about your digital strategy before you just let it go! ❄️

Quick ways to personalize your higher ed site based on user behavior:

🔹 Show the next best CTA – If a prospect just spent time on a program page, swap generic newsletter forms with a smart call-to-action for an upcoming info session.
🔹 Match the enrollment journey – Feature "Explore Majors" for new visitors, but update to "Next Steps for Admitted Students" for those returning via an acceptance email.
🔹 Use "soft personalization" – Subtly highlight related content without boxing users in or hiding your site's broader, default navigation.

At Digital Wave, we focus on building a clear website foundation that turns static pages into dynamic recruitment tools. If you need a partner to help structure an intuitive, behavioral content strategy that converts, send us a message — we'd love to help!

Website accessibility is the blueprint for making your site AI-ready.

Think about it this way: AI engines, like ChatGPT or Perplexity, read your website as a screen reader does. They do not look at flashy visual designs; they scan for structural data.

When you organize your site content with a clear heading hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3), you cover two major things at once:

♿ Accessibility: A user with a visual impairment can use a screen reader to easily navigate your pages and find information.

🤖 AI Engine Optimization: A machine can clearly parse your data architecture, vastly increasing your chances of being cited in AI search results.

Flat, unstructured pages get completely overlooked by machines. ❌️

Accessible, semantic data gets found and recommended. 🎯

Need help organizing your webpages? Reach out to us today!

In a recent webinar by Hannon Hill, host Kat Liendgens shared six trends of High-Performing Higher Ed Websites in 2026.

1️⃣ User-centered journeys to guide decisions.
2️⃣ Personalization at scale for tailored experiences.
3️⃣ Mobile-first experience to ensure phone-first performance.
4️⃣ Content that drives action to focus on outcomes.
5️⃣ Answer engine optimization (AEO) to be visible in AI search.
6️⃣ Operational excellence to sustain everything for the long haul.

Which of these trends do you need help prioritizing?

When TJ Gunther's four-year-old asked for "sour jellybeans," he assumed she meant exactly that.

After a few failed guesses, it turned out she actually wanted Sour Skittles. She knew what she wanted; they just weren’t using the same definition.

It’s a dynamic we see all the time in agency life.

In higher ed and nonprofit work especially, different teams can use the exact same words but mean completely different things. Throw in shifting leadership, cross-departmental committees, and institutional traditions, and finding a shared vocabulary becomes a project requirement of its own.

Precision is hard, but misalignment is expensive. 🎯

In his latest post, TJ breaks down the 3 communication patterns that show up in complex projects—and how to build a translation layer that keeps everyone on the same page:

🔗 https://www.digitalwave.com/2026/07/what-my-four-year-old-taught-me-about-client-communication/

What My Four-Year-Old Taught Me About Client Communication - Digital Wave Explore valuable client communication lessons inspired by parenting. Understand the importance of clarity and expression.

🇺🇸 Happy Fourth of July!

Today, America marks 250 years in the making. We hope you enjoy this semiquincentennial holiday with those who matter most!