I’d guess increasing your apparent value to prospective students and their parents is the main value of having shiny fluff on your front page. But I may not be separating the fluff-ass-marketing from the fluff-as-cultural-norm : there is an expectation of what a university page looks like, and people are uncomfortable when their expectations are violated too radically. It’s possible that there’s no intrinsic value to sticking a slideshow with pretty pictures and links to press releases on your website, but because of our current expectations it just looks bad not to have something like that.
I’d guess increasing your apparent value to prospective students and their parents is the main value of having shiny fluff on your front page. But I may not be separating the fluff-ass-marketing from the fluff-as-cultural-norm : there is an expectation of what a university page looks like, and people are uncomfortable when their expectations are violated too radically. It’s possible that there’s no intrinsic value to sticking a slideshow with pretty pictures and links to press releases on your website, but because of our current expectations it just looks bad not to have something like that.