A site built for insiders, not for the students it serves.
The university’s website ran on a platform nearing end of support and had grown into a catch-all for internal audiences. Its real strengths — affordability, access, and a student body with many different starting points — were buried.
The data showed the cost. Tuition and fees was a more popular page than financial aid, yet hard to find. Simple goals like applying saw high bounce rates. And among people not considering the university, the top reason was simply not knowing enough about it.¹
The stories were there. The site just wasn’t telling them to the people who needed to hear them.
There is no typical student.
Research defined nine primary audiences and five behavioral archetypes. Prospective undergraduates alone split into four groups with different needs — and graduate and adult learners wanted something else entirely.
| Student | Needs | How the site answers |
|---|---|---|
| Commuter | Transit, parking, a sense of belonging | Student Life gives commuter and residential life equal weight |
| Residential | A traditional campus experience | Housing and campus life as a clear path |
| First-gen & ESL | Plain language, a clear process, financial support | A step-by-step admissions toolkit and an “afford” block up front |
| Athlete | Clear requirements and steps to apply | A direct Apply → requirements path |
| Transfer | Credit and requirement clarity | Its own path from the front door |
| Graduate & adult | Flexible formats, proof of outcomes | Format filters and alumni stories in context |
Identify the student early, then get out of the way.
The homepage asks one question — who are you? — and opens a toolkit for that path: admissions, financial aid, visits, student life, and advising. Apply splits into undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education, and an “Information for…” menu serves current students, families, alumni, and staff without crowding prospects.
- Prospective first-year
- Transfer student
- Graduate student
- Admissions
- Afford it
- Visit
- Student life
- Advising
Stories as evidence, placed where decisions happen.
The strategy called for journeys built around mindsets rather than touchpoints, and for information-heavy pages told as narrative. Content was organized into three modes, so every page answers what it is, what to do next, and what it’s like.
Testing sharpened the approach: only 13% of participants found student stories through navigation. So stories moved into context — pulled onto program and student-life pages by taxonomy, right next to the decision they support.²
Find your fit by interest, career, or format.
All 138 program pages were tagged by level, type, interest, career, and format, so one finder can surface an undergraduate major, a graduate degree, a minor, or a certificate. When testing showed the format filter and “Continuing Education” label confused people, both were renamed before launch.
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Major
- Minor
- Certificate
- Online
- Hybrid
- Certificates & Adult Education
- Study abroad
- 138 programs
- Interest
- Career
- Format
- Your fit
Tested with students before it shipped.
Eight moderated sessions put the new structure through 14 navigation tasks and 8 journey scenarios. Core paths held up — applying, financial aid, visits, and certificate programs — and every miss became a design change before launch. At launch, 1,844 legacy URLs were redirected into 465 destinations, about four old pages to every new one.³
Post-launch performance data will be added as it becomes available.