Go for the Goals: HighEdWeb 2018 Presentation
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The document discusses redesign goals for a university website to help prospective students. The goals were to define the site's voice and tone, improve navigation, make critical tasks like applying easier, showcase the unique location, and be more authentic. Metrics like application numbers, traffic to key pages, and exit rates improved after the redesign, showing it was successful in achieving the goals.
Go for the Goals: HighEdWeb 2018 Presentation
- 1. Go for the Goals Helping prospective students 鍖nd what they need, how they need itand look good doing it Emily Mayock Assistant Vice President, Online & Internal Communications Case Western Reserve University emily.mayock@case.edu 際際滷s: bit.ly/hew-goals
- 6. microsoft.com/design/inclusive For many of us, finding information about colleges was difficult. For prospective students today, the difficulty may lie in information overload.
- 7. So how can you stand out to busy, overloaded teens, in a sea of similar- seeming schools?
- 11. Redesign Goals
- 12. Redesign Goals De鍖ne and execute voice and tone Improve navigation Make critical tasks (apply) and information gathering (tuition rates) easier Make the site more visually interesting but still easy to update Showcase our unique location Be more authenticnot generic
- 14. Increase unique visits to the homepage by 10% Up tra鍖c to the apply page by 10% Hold applications steady Attract even more academically accomplished and well-rounded students Boost tra鍖c to schedule a visit form Decrease overall page count Measuring Success
- 15. Know Your Audience Pro tip: Its not everyone."
- 20. Use What Youve Got Research is time-consumingbut critical. Use your available resources e鍖ectively. Tour guides are one of your most helpful assets, for many reasons Find existing research into your audience and use it; dont redo valid work for the sake of redoing
- 25. Who are you, who are you not, and who do you want to be? Card-sorting exercises are critical to determine your voice and tone Every decision you make in terms of contentwords, images, video and designneeds to re鍖ect these decisions Goal 1: Define Voice & Tone
- 27. Goal 2: Improve Navigation* *Side effect goal: Decrease page count Streamline your content! Clean house wherever you can, before you get to reworking. Does it have a purposeand does it make an impactwhere it is? If not, move, rework or remove. Analytics are like a good attorney: They present the facts to make your case.
- 28. How can you rework your content to actually work? Consolidate! We cut our page count by half, 鍖nding better, more prominent places for everything By sharing visual, information-鍖lled, topic-driven pages instead of bland, text-heavy, niche pages, we could actually give more prominence to the pages that received little tra鍖c Goal 2: Improve Navigation* *Side effect goal: Decrease page count
- 29. 54 visits to the dining page from September 2016 to mid-January 2017
- 30. 1,823 Visits to the housing and dining page from September 2017 to mid-January 2018
- 34. Test, Fix, Test Again User testing is critical. Remember, you are not your average user. Just because you understand how to navigate your site or operate a feature doesnt mean everyone will. Navigation is meant to provide a clear path. Eliminate excessive links that splinter your tra鍖c.
- 35. 17% of traffic to the apply page, from the homepage pre-redesign
- 36. 39% of traffic to the apply page, from the homepage post-redesign
- 38. Why college students visit your site: 1. Tuition rates 2. Scholarships 3. Programs o鍖ered 4. Financial aid 5. Apply Source: Ru鍖alo Noel Levitz 2018 E-Expectations Trend Report Goal 3: Make completing tasks and finding information easier
- 41. Goal 3: Make completing tasks and finding information easier
- 43. Goal 3: Make Completing Tasks and Finding Information Easier Again, consolidate. Test. Accommodate. Consolidated multiple rankings/facts-driven pages into one Students struggled to 鍖nd key facts on the old site Placement still may not be idealso where else can it be featured to ensure there are multiple ways of 鍖nding it? It never hurts to be helpful.
- 44. Improve aesthetics while maintaining ease of updates
- 45. Goal 4: Improve Aesthetics While Improving Ease of Updates for End Users 77% rated our setup of Drupal as easier or significantly easier than previous CMS
- 48. Goal 5: Showcase Our Location Urban campus in a park-like setting in Cleveland, Ohio In the heart of one the most culturally dense square miles in the U.S. Quick walk to the No. 2 hospital in the country, a statewide medical powerhouse and a VA hospital Short car, bus or train ride from downtown
- 50. Be Authentic
- 51. Goal 6: Be Authentic De鍖ned our voice and tone Reworked all contentincluding images and video to make sure it aligned Listened to our users to determine what actually worked for them Consolidated and re-architected the site content to better meet our voice, tone and overall goals Shared with prospectives their need-to-know information that is unique to ustuition, programs Showed our unique campus location
- 54. So did it pay off?
- 55. 25,379 applications to the Class of 2021 (pre-redesign) a record-breaking number!
- 56. 26,646 applications to the Class of 2022 (post-redesign) again, a record-breaking number!
- 57. 5% growth in applications, year over year
- 58. boost in traffic to Undergraduate Admissions homepage 25% decrease in exit rates from the homepage 8% increase in traffic to the visit/events section 334%
- 59. 1,390students: our largest, most academically accomplished class in university history