Ozarks Technical Community College and I are just about the same age. When I was six months old in the spring of 1990, a group of Springfield, Missouri citizens and representatives from 13 area school districts met to discuss the need for a community college with a technical education focus in the queen city of the Ozarks.

In the fall of 1991, a little more than 1,300 students began their post-secondary work at OTC. Now, the community college serves more than 15,000 students across five regional campuses. More than 1,000 of those students are completing a technical education program with the community college. And this summer, while most of those students are on break, Checkmate Consulting will be working to refresh the content of 21 technical education department websites.

On June 17, I presented the content plan and mock-up for new department landing pages to the dean of technical education. It's phase 1 of 3 in this summer-long process, but I'm excited to move forward in executing the web content plan we've determined based on three goals for the website.

The website features a compelling, conversational tone.
The website features content that is engaging, skimmable and chunked up to encourage lingering and scrolling on the page.
The website features specific conversion opportunities, with big, bold contact us forms, automatically generated email responses and a prominent button on each page to contact a department team member.

OTC Technical Education division knows the value of having compelling website content that is also optimized for a mobile experience. Here at Checkmate, we're not just providing words on a screen for the 20-something community college; we're providing targeted language for the 20-something potential student, wrapped in highly engaging visuals, videos and more.

A website cannot just be a landing page. It has to be more, and with Checkmate Consulting, we're doing more to take brands further.