Jason Robinson
𐡷 Curiosity, hospitality & craft 𐡸
Degree microsites align visitor needs with business goals
CASE STUDY: CONTENT STRATEGY
My team’s UX research turned up something interesting: prospective students were visiting as many as 6 separate NAU websites — often with distinct layouts and navigation — in the process of researching and applying for a degree program. Here’s a real guest’s journey as they researched an NAU nursing degree:
PROBLEM:
Discussions with stakeholders across the institution revealed the political and technical roots of this situation:
Politically, individual offices were responsible for presenting information from their own perspective and according to their own politics, with no unifying story for the prospective student. (Example: This online nursing degree appeared on both the School of Nursing and NAU Online websites, each containing specifics omitted by the other.)
Technically, our catalog data was being served by our PeopleSoft system of record, and (appropriately!) guarded by its data stewards — this is, after all, the data used for accreditation and student records. However, there was no system in place for University Marketing to create content atop this ‘sacred’ data. (Example: During COVID, there was a spike of interest in epidemiology, an area for which NAU is renowned — but Marketing was unable to quickly update degree descriptions to include common SEO terms.)
APPROACH:
A new, dedicated Degree Search tool led visitors to a microsite that pulled together a) accreditation data from PeopleSoft, b) institutional data about tuition and applications, c) degree-specific Marketing copy entered via a new custom WordPress admin tool, d) academic data from the relevant College and School, and e) data from external sources like government jobs databases.
From a single source, prospective students could now find key information about their program — and we could directly guide them to connect with our admissions staff via a prominent Request-for-Info form.
The design is fully responsive, uses a component-based design system, and page generation is automated based on available data.
RESULTS:
Requests-for-Information (our primary KPI) increased by 15% within 3 months of launch, then >40% YoY across the next calendar year.
John Devoy
Vice President of Search and Web Analytics at Kiosk
