As a four-year state university with approximately 7,000 students and over 100 academic programs throughout four colleges, Armstrong Atlantic State University had struggled for over a year to coordinate internal resources between Marketing and Information Technology in order to re-design and launch a new website.

Summary:

The site’s front-end design was dated, difficult to navigate and did not represent a consistent or compelling brand. Additionally, AASU staff needed a Content Management System (CMS) to enable non-technical faculty and staff users to publish, edit and update site content. The dated front-end design, confusing site architecture and navigation combined with the poor usability of the website’s overall experience – both for front-end users as well as the Admin toolset for staff – had direct implications for AASU’s ability to meet recruitment, enrollment and student retention goals. This also severely impacted workflow and efficiency for AASU’s faculty and staff as it was necessary to put in requests for website updates into a lengthy queue with the IT department.

We were brought in to assess the site’s most critical priorities for improvement through usability studies, a thorough site analysis and recommendations and stakeholder interviews. Recommendations were made for an affordable content management system, information architecture and design improvements as well as the minimal necessary team resources, and our project manager worked with the internal team to coordinate a phased launch to redesign and re-architect the site, then move every university department over to the new design and new content management system through a phased project plan.