Westminster College | Academic Page Content Strategy

I created new content for more than 70 academic programs, ranging from nursing and business to art and outdoor leadership.

The challenge

Historically, professors were responsible for populating their program’s web content. As a result, academic content was hugely variable and some programs weren’t represented on the website at all. The college needed to standardize their academic program page design to help users quickly find the information they needed and ensure a consistently high-quality experience across programs.

The approach

Before we could start creating content, we needed to collect data and get organized. We conducted market and persona research to identify the information most important to prospective students. That data allowed us to create a program page template that was targeted to our user’s needs and would help standardize content across programs.

The next step was to restrict editing access to the website—an unpopular, but necessary move. With hundreds of web editors across campus, we couldn’t effectively tackle this project without consolidating editing permissions. To help faculty feel more supported and optimistic through this change, I conducted one-on-one discovery interviews with every department head to inform our approach to content production.

The work

I ultimately created content—including writing copy, sourcing and selecting imagery, and collaborating with the UX designer to create other visual elements—for more than 70 program pages. Every page featured custom content informed by user needs, faculty expertise, and the college’s brand guidelines.

The results

Six months after launch, analytics showed a 33% increase in traffic to academic (conversion) pages, a 22% decrease in global bounce rate, and a 15% increase in academic applications via the website.