Nuts &
Bolts
Timeline
December 2017 — January 2019
Project Scope
- Discovery and audience research
- UX and information architecture
- Content strategy, copywriting, and messaging
- Governance and editorial training
- Pattern library design and front end development
CMS
Omni CMS
Third-Party Integrations
Trumba, Slate
Site Size
250+ content pages at first launch, 23,000+ pages in the domain overall
Needs more orange.
This school has a BIG personality (think bright orange and cowboy hats) but their outdated design just didn’t feel like the university.
The navigation required a complete overhaul. There were 194 (!) links on the homepage alone and no global navigation. Each link led to a separate subdomain in the OSU site family, each with its own unique structure. It was disorienting.
Our new architecture would seamlessly integrate admissions, better represent OSU’s personality, and offer a significantly improved user experience.
Breaking down silos
We heard them loud and clear. The team wanted people to receive consistent messages and the same look and feel across all university communications. To that end, the chief goal of the redesign project was to create a design system that would inspire colleges and other units on campus to adopt it.
Dreaming as big as the sky
OSU’s website had to be casual, personal, understanding, helpful, and fun and, of course… it had to be ORANGE. We went bold with messaging and design and created plenty of styles to show off their brag points with big numerals for statistics, big display headlines, and general bigness and boldness to match their personality.
The whole website drives admissions
“With our new website, our admissions site and our homepage are all one website. They’re integrated,” OSU’s branding and digital strategy director said. “There’s no disconnect anymore.”
The admissions conversion funnel tracks goals using Google Analytics and Slate. We prioritized new centralized content along key user paths for the prospective student audience — academic programs, scholarships and financial aid, admissions, about, and student life.
As a result, post-launch “Get Mail” (request for information) conversions went up more than 35%, and “Apply” conversions were also up.
Want to talk enrollment strategy?
Enrollment Services is led by Robynne Lofton whose career spans 26 years in enrollment management positions.
