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A new website design with targeted content attracts students to an arts and sciences college

Client: Northern Kentucky University Industry: Higher Education Get in touch

The College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) at Northern Kentucky University needed a new website. Their existing site’s UX left students confused and without the information they came for.

Challenge

Create a new website for a school with diverse departments and a messy existing platform

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is home to approximately 16,000 students and is a Forbes Top College in America. Their College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) — the largest college within the university — was in desperate need of a new website to support NKU’s impressive reputation.

Over the years, NKU has had many content managers and editors with a variety of permissions put their touches on the COAS site. And as a result of too many cooks in the kitchen, the site featured too many varying styles and layouts.

Consequently, the user experience was inconsistent, and it was confusing for prospective and current students to know where to go for the information they needed about the college. Making matters worse, there was a lack of cross linking between websites (such as NKU’s main site and the COAS site) that led users to lots of dead ends.

The college just couldn’t be sure they were attracting new students given the poor UX of their website. They needed a platform that showcased COAS’s unique qualities and diverse educational pathways to the best and the brightest people seeking higher education.

Services:

Competitive analysis SWOT analysis Content strategy Content inventory & audit Content development Information architecture development User experience planning User testing Systems integration User interface design Responsive website design & development

The College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) at Northern Kentucky University needed a new website. Their existing site’s UX left students confused and without the information they came for.

Services:

Competitive analysis SWOT analysis Content strategy Content inventory & audit Content development Information architecture development User experience planning User testing Systems integration User interface design Responsive website design & development

Challenge

Create a new website for a school with diverse departments and a messy existing platform

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is home to approximately 16,000 students and is a Forbes Top College in America. Their College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) — the largest college within the university — was in desperate need of a new website to support NKU’s impressive reputation.

Over the years, NKU has had many content managers and editors with a variety of permissions put their touches on the COAS site. And as a result of too many cooks in the kitchen, the site featured too many varying styles and layouts.

Consequently, the user experience was inconsistent, and it was confusing for prospective and current students to know where to go for the information they needed about the college. Making matters worse, there was a lack of cross linking between websites (such as NKU’s main site and the COAS site) that led users to lots of dead ends.

The college just couldn’t be sure they were attracting new students given the poor UX of their website. They needed a platform that showcased COAS’s unique qualities and diverse educational pathways to the best and the brightest people seeking higher education.

Project

Research and a website overhaul lead to superior UX

Despite the challenges of the website redesign for COAS, the team at Sanger & Eby had an advantage: We had worked with NKU before to complete a restructure and redesign of their Steely Library website.

We were able to not only leverage our established relationships with NKU staff members, but also our past experience coding within NKU’s Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) environment. We were also already well acquainted with the university’s style guidelines and templates, making it seamless to suggest and implement changes to the COAS site.

Here are the tasks we undertook to launch the new site for the NKU college:

Research

Our research for the new COAS website consisted of:

  • An audit of their current site
  • An analysis of other university websites to inform our new design
  • A collaborative content audit in tandem with the COAS team to review the analytics of each page, flag disconnects between each department’s target messaging and the content existing within the COAS structure, and identify content gaps

This comprehensive research allowed us to enter into planning and design with the confidence that we were building the right site for the COAS…one that would appeal to ideal prospective students.

Tech stack

The following languages and platforms were used to bring this project to life:

Languages

JavaScript
HTML5/CSS
Custom Responsive CSS

Frameworks/tools

Bootstrap
jQuery

CMS

Adobe Experience Manager
CRXDE Lite

Design

We delivered lots of fresh materials to NKU for their college’s site, including:

  • A new site architecture
  • New page templates
  • Unique, novel ways to use existing components
  • Foundational content

The reimagined website architecture features intuitive pathways for each key section of the COAS content. That way, users are guided to the information they need most. Overall, the new site’s organizational structure and templates are consistent yet flexible. Pertinent information is always at the forefront of the pages for all users to see. But the structure also promotes user exploration and eliminates those dead ends, providing multiple routes to the details users ultimately want.

During the wireframe stage, we explored new page templates for the program and department pages (i.e., anthropology, english, philosophy and so on). These templates strike the perfect balance. They’re consistent with the look and feel of the COAS site on the whole because we used components the team already knew how to work with. But these templates also allow for some flexibility for each department and program within the COAS to make their own pages slightly unique per their target student audiences. Even better, the facelift we gave these components makes for more straightforward maintenance.

We also provided content recommendations for trimming down their site to feature core information that prospective students truly need to engage with the college and its offerings. We even wrote foundational content for the platform that speaks to the value the COAS offers and resonates with the type of students they’re trying to attract. This foundational content will make it easier for the COAS to build unified messaging around every COAS subsection and beyond.

Results

A navigable website that appeals to prospective arts and sciences students

Our designers worked within NKU’s design standards and AEM environment to create a dynamic new website design that amplifies the new site architecture and drives prospective and current student engagement, interest and action.

The site’s design is consistent yet flexible for both improved UX and simpler site modifications down the line. Content managers can now serve students the information they need from the website.

Importantly, the website’s new system is such that NKU could choose to extend it across their other colleges — or continue to work with Sanger & Eby to do so on their behalf.

 

Ready for a website refresh for better UX? Let’s talk.