Large Education Institution: Aging and Ineffective Student Site

The Challenge

ISSUES & OBSTACLES

Our Client is one of the largest community college systems in the US. Opened in 1971, this college has trained over 2 million students in various associate and technical degree programs since its inception. With multiple campuses, this client has been providing education to thousands of students who need an alternative to attending a major University.

The website didn’t drive the growth the client was expecting. The site was almost 10 years old with issues that included; dated content, information search issues, antiquated navigation, poor branding and broken links.

Overall, the current solution and architecture could not take the school to the next level to meet the needs of their students or the institution as a whole.

The Solution

Xpediant used their proven methodology to steer their efforts:

Simplifying the process for creation, management and delivery of information.
Making information accessible to the end user from his/her perspective, rather than only the needs of the administration.
Developing well defined user personas for all constituencies.
Enhancing the student experience / Streamlining the enrollment process
Offering content that would promote student success.

Xpediant recommended a CMS system that provided the ability to:

Support a global brand through web-standard style management.
Dramatically increase the number of staff managing their own content through decentralized content management.
Support a framework by which content can be added over time while maintaining a student-centric navigation and content experience.
Support enhanced business processes and changes to those processes in a dynamic web environment

The Content Implementation included:

Conducting over 20 sessions on taxonomy and content design with various content visionaries throughout system.
Conducting over 30 content training sessions and open labs to teach content owners how to classify their content.
Training over 200 staff on content entry in the new CMS system.

The technical Implementation included:

Developing a new modern look and navigation.
Creating all new pages (templates) based on the new branding standard.
Building a custom Search with Advanced features.
Building a custom Calendar Application with multiple views and filters based on content classification.
Building a custom implementation of Google Maps for location services.

The Results

Reduced abandon rate for application and registration processing by 50%.
30% increase in online admissions and registrations in the first year after implementation.
Financial aid applications increased nearly 30%.
Shorter admission and registration lines on campus.
Increased in student enrollment.

Selected Technology Partners

What Customers Think About Us?

“Xpediant is a dependable partner to work with, providing experienced technical talent. The Xpediant team collaborates well with our development team and management, and are focused on making our projects successful. They are an important part of our digital team”

– VP, Business Process Re-engineering – Adaptive Marketing