Our goals were to transform the college web presence from an info-dense dashboard to a highly-engaging and consistent experience that speaks directly to our students' aspirations. This included immersive use of video, a streamlined navigation with strategic use of CTAs, and a new way for students to discover academic programs by either searching or browsing thematic groupings.
Rather than overwhelming our users with every possible direction they could explore, we wanted to direct visitor's attention to discover a major or take an admissions action (seasonally swaps between Visit Campus and Apply).
Finding the right balance of streamlined navigation vs fast discovery of deeper content involved a lot of prototype iteration as well as focus-group testing. In the end, the navigation seen on initial load includes our major call-to-actions, 3 strategically chosen "escape hatches" for alternate audiences, and an easy-to-find search and slideout menu toggle. Opening the menu provides instant access to site search as well as a detailed site navigation.
An oversized search field allows visitors to search programs by name, interest, or career. As the user types, instant matches appear in a dropdown window. For those more inclined to browse, we replaced our massive, 3 column list of programs with 9 thematically grouped tiles that lead to newly developed landing pages for popular program groupings.
