Located just north of Seattle, Edmonds College offers both 2- and 4-year degrees while also striving to meet the needs of nontraditional students and community partners. Edmonds asked MAC to guide them in a complete overhaul of multiple public-facing websites in order to streamline user pathways, while also creating fresh brand messaging and marketing tools to help the college better tell its story.

Deliverables

  • Strategy

  • Messaging

  • Website

  • Content

  • Marketing Tools

Challenge

Edmonds has long been designated as an Achieving the Dream Leader College, with a strong commitment to closing achievement gaps, particularly for low-income students and students of color. Our team brought together dozens of Edmonds stakeholders to listen, learn, and better understand their commitment to student achievement, diversity, and belonging. In addition to conducting numerous interviews and focus groups, we led them in a half-day brand messaging workshop to begin the process of drafting a new positioning statement and other core messaging to define what sets Edmonds apart in a crowded Seattle market.

Approach

While the messaging work was underway, our UX strategy team audited the Edmonds websites for accessibility compliance, user analytics, quality of content, and more. We analyzed a half-dozen competitor websites, too, in order to establish best practices in information architecture and functionality. Additionally, our deep research and planning work involved a survey of hundreds of website users — staff and students alike. We then documented issues related to content organization, navigation and wayfinding, along with our recommendations for improvement.

Wireframes and visual design page mockups were further improved through user testing.

I had the pleasure of working with MAC to redesign our website and redevelop our key brand messaging. This project was on a very tight timeline and the team didn’t miss a beat. They zeroed in on our issues very quickly, were efficient with our time, aware of the budget, kept meetings on track and addressed all stakeholder needs.

Karen Magarelli

Results

After designing the site’s bold and bright UX/UI — which was further informed by user testing — our development team created the HTML/CSS/Javascript files and collaborated with our client’s IT staff for implementing the templates and components into the CMS. We assisted with copywriting, editing, and content migration, as well as provided a written guide for developing future on-brand copy along with other digital communication tools.

 

We gave Edmonds a fresh new brand look while streamlining access to key pages, reduced clutter and outdated information, and simplified communication around complex topics including the application process for unique student types.

Following the launch of the website, the average number of weekly completions of the new student request information form more than doubled.

In the end we enabled Edmonds to deliver a completely new-and-improved online experience for prospective students seeking to understand not just what the college offers — but also what it stands for.

 

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