Right now, somewhere in South Africa, an 18-year-old is trying to decide their future. They're sitting on a taxi, or lying on their bed, or waiting for something to happen. They have their phone in their hand. They have data, but not much. They have a question: should I study at your university?
So they Google you. They tap the link. Your website loads. Sort of.
The header is cut off. The menu doesn't work properly on mobile. They scroll and the text is tiny. They pinch to zoom and now they can only see half the screen. They're looking for information about your Commerce degree but the navigation makes no sense. They tap "Programmes" and get a PDF that takes forever to download. They wait. It opens. It's a 47-page prospectus designed for desktop viewing. They can barely read it.
They're not frustrated yet. They're just done. They close the tab. They Google another university. That website works. It's clean. The course information is right there. They can actually read it. They apply.
You lost a student. You'll never know it happened. There's no metric for "people who left because your website was broken." They just disappear.
This is happening every day. Every week. Every application cycle. Universities are spending money on billboards, open days, and prospectus printing while their primary point of contact with prospective students is fundamentally broken.
Your website is losing you applications. And most universities have no idea.
How Students Actually Browse
Let's start with a basic truth that many universities haven't absorbed: students are browsing on their phones.
Not some students. Most students. For many prospective applicants, especially in South Africa, their phone is their only internet device. They don't have laptops at home. They don't sit at desktops. When they want to research universities, they do it on a 6-inch screen, probably on mobile data that they're paying for by the megabyte.
This changes everything about how your website needs to work.
They're not leisurely exploring. They're trying to find specific information quickly. They're comparing you to other universities, often with multiple tabs open. They're impatient, not because they're rude, but because their data is running out and three other sites are waiting.
They're also doing this in stolen moments. On transport. Between classes. Late at night. They're not setting aside two hours to research higher education options. They're giving you two minutes. Maybe less.
In those two minutes, they need to find what they came for, understand it, and feel confident enough to take the next step. If your website makes this hard, they leave. They don't send feedback. They don't call to complain. They simply go somewhere else.
Universities that understand this are winning. Universities that don't are losing students to competitors who might not even have better programmes, just better websites.
What's Actually Broken
Let's be specific about what's going wrong. This isn't vague "could be better" feedback. These are concrete failures that are costing you applications.
Mobile experience is an afterthought. Most university websites were designed for desktop first, then sort of adjusted for mobile. The result is a compromised experience on the device most students actually use. Elements overlap. Text is unreadable without zooming. Buttons are too small to tap accurately. Navigation menus that work fine with a mouse become impossible with a thumb.
Design is visibly broken. Not just suboptimal. Broken. Images that don't resize properly. Layouts that collapse into chaos on smaller screens. Headers that push critical content below the fold. Sometimes literal broken elements: buttons that don't work, links that lead nowhere, forms that can't be submitted on mobile. This isn't a subjective design opinion. It's functional failure.
Load times are unacceptable. Large images that haven't been optimised. Unnecessary scripts running in the background. PDFs embedded where web pages should exist. On a fast wifi connection, this is annoying. On mobile data, it's a dealbreaker. Students aren't going to wait 15 seconds for your homepage to load. They're gone in 5.
Navigation makes no sense. University websites are often organised around internal structures rather than user needs. Faculties, departments, administrative divisions. These categories mean something to staff. They mean nothing to an 18-year-old trying to find out if you offer a law degree. Students don't think in your org chart. They think in questions: What can I study? How much does it cost? How do I apply?
Information is buried. The things students most want to know are often the hardest to find. Entry requirements hidden in PDF documents. Fee structures that require three clicks and a download. Application deadlines mentioned once in a news post from six months ago. Critical information is there, technically. But if students can't find it in 30 seconds, it might as well not exist.
The Invisible Cost
Here's what makes this problem so persistent: you can't see the students you're losing.
When a student visits your campus and has a bad experience, you might notice. When a student calls with a question and gets transferred five times, they might complain. When a student applies and gets rejected, that's in your data.
But when a student visits your website, gets frustrated, and leaves? Nothing. No record. No complaint. No data point. They simply never become an applicant. They show up in no report. They're invisible.
This creates a dangerous blind spot. Universities can look at their application numbers and think things are fine. Applications are steady. Maybe even growing. But they have no idea how many potential applicants bounced off a broken website. They're measuring who made it through the obstacle course, not who gave up at the first hurdle.
The students you're losing aren't sending you feedback because they don't owe you anything. They were considering you. You made it hard. They left. That's the entire interaction from their perspective. Why would they email to tell you your mobile menu is broken? They just went somewhere else.
This is why website problems persist for years at institutions that would never tolerate similar failures elsewhere. If your campus security was broken, you'd know immediately. If your website is broken, you might never find out.
Course Pages Are Everything
Let's talk about the most important pages on your entire website: the individual course pages.
This is why students come. Not for your vice-chancellor's welcome message. Not for your news about research grants. Not for your photo gallery of smiling students on lawns. They come to find out about the specific programme they're interested in. BCom. BSc. LLB. Whatever it is.
If these pages are good, everything else can be mediocre and you'll still convert visitors into applicants. If these pages are bad, nothing else matters. You could have the most beautiful homepage in higher education and still lose students the moment they try to find actual information.
What do students need from a course page? The basics. What will I study? How long is the programme? What are the entry requirements? How much does it cost? What can I do with this qualification? How do I apply?
What do most university course pages actually provide? A paragraph of vague marketing copy. A link to a PDF prospectus. Maybe a list of modules with no explanation of what they involve. Entry requirements that reference codes and acronyms students don't understand. No fees, or fees that are "available on request," which means students leave immediately.
This is where the gap between institutional thinking and student thinking becomes most visible. The university thinks: we've provided the information, it's in the prospectus. The student thinks: I can't find what I need, I'm leaving.
Every piece of friction on your course pages is a potential lost application. Every PDF that should be a web page. Every jargon term that should be plain language. Every missing fee. Every unclear requirement. Friction adds up. Students subtract themselves.
What Good Actually Looks Like
Let's be constructive. What does a university website need to actually work for prospective students?
Mobile-first design. Not mobile-friendly. Mobile-first. The primary design should be built for phone screens, then adapted for desktop, not the other way around. This isn't idealism. It's just designing for how your actual users actually browse.
Fast loading. Every page should load in under 3 seconds on a decent mobile connection. This requires optimised images, minimal scripts, and no unnecessary elements. If something doesn't help the user, it shouldn't be slowing down their experience.
Clear navigation based on user needs. Prospective students should be able to find programmes, fees, requirements, and application information within two taps from the homepage. Not buried in menus. Not hidden behind dropdowns. Right there, obvious, accessible.
Course pages that answer real questions. Each programme page should tell students what they'll study, how long it takes, what they need to get in, what it costs, and how to apply. All on one page. All in plain language. No PDFs. No "contact us for more information." The information, right there.
Design that works. Not design that wins awards. Design that functions. Buttons that are big enough to tap. Text that's readable without zooming. Images that display correctly. Forms that submit properly. The baseline of professional web design, applied consistently.
Respect for data costs. This matters enormously in South Africa. Lightweight pages. No autoplay videos. Compressed images. Students on prepaid data should be able to browse your entire site without burning through their budget. If they can't, you're excluding the students who most need access to higher education.
The Real Competition
Here's a perspective shift that might help: you're not just competing with other universities. You're competing with every other well-designed website your prospective students have ever used.
Students use Instagram. They use TikTok. They use banking apps and shopping sites and streaming services. These platforms are fast, intuitive, and mobile-optimised. That's the baseline expectation students bring to every website they visit.
When they land on a university site that looks like it was built in 2010 and barely works on their phone, they notice. They might not consciously think "this website is poorly designed." But they feel it. Something feels off. Something feels difficult. Something feels old.
Perception matters. A broken, outdated website signals something about your institution. It suggests you're not keeping up. It suggests you don't prioritise the student experience. It suggests that if this is how you present yourself online, maybe this is how you operate in general.
Is that fair? Maybe not. But it's real. Students are making judgments about your institution based on how your website makes them feel. And if it makes them feel frustrated, confused, or unimportant, they're drawing conclusions.
You're Probably Underinvesting
Most universities treat their website as a communications expense. Something the marketing department handles. A line item that gets reviewed when budgets are tight.
This is a mistake. Your website isn't a brochure. It's your primary recruitment tool. More prospective students will interact with your website than will ever attend an open day, read your prospectus, or speak to your admissions team. For many students, the website is the only interaction they'll have before deciding whether to apply.
If you're spending serious money on billboards but running a broken website, your priorities are misaligned. The billboard might get them to Google you. The website determines whether they apply. A beautiful billboard that sends traffic to a broken website is just an expensive way to lose applicants.
Proper investment in your website isn't a marketing cost. It's infrastructure. It's the foundation of your entire recruitment funnel. And if that foundation is cracked, everything built on top of it is unstable.
This Is Fixable
Here's the good news: this problem is entirely solvable. It's not a mystery. It doesn't require breakthrough innovation. It requires proper investment, thoughtful design, and a commitment to building something that actually works for students.
This is what Silentium does. We help universities see their digital presence through the eyes of prospective students. We identify what's broken, what's friction, and what's costing you applications. Then we help you fix it.
Not with generic advice. With specific, practical changes that improve real outcomes. Navigation that makes sense. Course pages that convert. Mobile experiences that work. Design that functions on every device, for every student, including the ones browsing on limited data on a taxi.
Your website should be your hardest-working recruiter. It should be there at 11pm when a student is making decisions. It should answer questions before they're asked. It should make applying feel easy, not like an obstacle course.
Right now, for most universities, it's not doing that. It's losing you students. You just can't see them leaving.
We can help you fix that.