Summer site
The opportunity
I took on a communication campaign to increase awareness of a new semester called ‘Summer Session’.
It was optional, but the university wanted more current students to enrol in it.
The new session kicked off a year prior. Campaign pages had been added to the main uni site, the main source of truth for students.
I could increase awareness with promotional content. But to truly help any students considering enrolling in the session (and increase enrolments), the web content needed to be helpful.
Is it user-informed?
A quick review of the web content, I learned:
The pages were built without student input or testing.
The landing page was dominated by testimonial videos — students talking about the subjects they’d taken in the session.
It featured many link-outs to existing pages, sending users on complex (and I imagined frustrating) journeys. Although this was an easier and sustainable way to maintain the content, it made users do the work.
Subject availability was hard to find. The journey showed that students had to dive five clicks deep to learn if a subject was offered.
Subjects aren’t like degrees
Five clicks might be doable if you were looking at one or two options. However, students are often interested in multiple subjects —especially those keen to study over the summer for ‘extra credit’. They’d need to look through many subjects to see which had prerequisites and availability.
Interested students needed to do the work, with subject information five clicks deep.
Dig deeper
I reached out to students via a survey and some 1:1 interviews. And requested information on enrolment to understand popular and unpopular subjects.
Survey
Students considering Summer Session.
I wanted to know:
What questions did they have about Summer Session?
What’s unclear to them about the Summer Session?
Survey and 1:1 interviews
Students who’d completed the Summer Session.
I wanted to know:
How did they learn about the Summer Session?
Any barriers or opportunities when enrolling in Summer Session?
What was their motivation to enrol*
*I’d later use this to develop personas for campaign content
I learned that students:
Wanted to know what subjects were on offer and any prerequisites.
Didn’t know session dates – when to enrol, when it started and ended.
Thought the session might be compulsory.
Wanted to know if the session was open to international students.
I also knew from experience that students:
Filtered by the faculty they enrolled in.
Filtered out options based on degree level (postgraduate or undergraduate).
Dig deeper-er
We looked at Google Analytics for the pages. It told us:
Testimonial videos dominating the landing page had low engagement.
Students were mainly visiting the link out to subject listings.
International students
Although seasoned ‘local’ students learn to navigate the many subject pages and enrolment tools, we knew that the Summer Session had the potential for more enrolments from International students. They were less familiar with the many scheduling tools and calendar dates. The more we helped them online, the fewer enquiries to hit student support centres.
Buy in
I knew the project sponsor respected data. So I pulled together a one-page request, including the data I had. And got buy-in from the client to budget the work and additional time.
An easy subject feed
I paired with our web coordinator to see how we could make subject information easier to find.
After investigation, we decided to leverage an existing data feed to surface subjects in the CMS.
Together we mapped the fields to student needs and built the table.
We used an existing integration to surface subjects to students, making it easier to see what they could enrol in.
Content thinking
Students filtered by undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) – so we surfaced that information. The acronym was familiar to current students and widely used.
Students filtered subjects by faculty, an existing pattern – so we categorised subjects by faculty.
There were subjects open to all students, no matter their faculty. Those subjects were hidden in the feed of the faculty that ‘owned’ them. Most students wouldn’t think to search a different facility subject feed for subjects they could do, so we created a ‘General’ category to better expose them.
Key dates made easy
Rather than sending students to search a list of 350+ dates, I created a single page with the five need-to-know dates.
Although this page would need one to two hours of effort to maintain year-on-year, it made it easier for students. And we believed the effort was worthwhile, at least while the session was a new offering.
Key dates upfront. Don’t make them dig through 350+ listings.
Rejigged landing page
I revised the content on the landing page based on user needs:
1. Why summer: Some short copy talking to the four personas.
2. The subjects: One click to the subject table.
3. Need to know: Top FAQs (written in plain language) addressing the top questions we’d heard (i.e. “Can International students enrol?”).
4. How to enrol and key date: Must-know dates to enrol and session dates.
From a landing page of testimonials to one that surfaced what users wanted.
Personas
I used what I learned from the interviews and surveys to create four personas:
The worker
The catcher-upper
Lighten my load
The traveller
And used them to build out promotional content, such as social posts and student blog content.
Example: The catcher-upper
Failed a subject? Or maybe you’re a little behind subject-wise? For some students Summer Session is a way to catch up.
Results
We delivered revised content based on user needs. On top of campaign content.
We simplified user flows to give students what they wanted.
We built a sustainable subject feed using an existing integration.
Enrolments increased from 8% to 13%.
Our client was happy.
From 5 clicks to 1. Find them subjects easier!
Thinking back…
I cringe to see the sentence case mismatch that is ‘Summer Session’, ‘Summer session’, ‘summer session’. The prevailing pattern is title case (Autumn Session, Spring Session). I should’ve been more laser-focused. And have since learned to build this skill.