Responsive Web Design, Conversion Rate Optimization, Information Architecture
Southern New Hampshire University's online program, SNHU.edu, is one of the highest attended not-for-profit online universities in the world.
A large percentage of SNHU.edu's leads for prospective students came from web searches that directed to their SEM micro-site. This site allowed prospects to find information on potential degrees and fill out a form to be called by an admissions counselor in the specific academic program.
The website already had a relatively high conversion rate, but SNHU's own user research uncovered necessary improvements to the navigation and general usability. There were several goals for the redesign:
As each program owner previously had control over the webpages for their degrees, the page hierarchy could be completely different for each program. In other cases degrees would be grouped by Arts or Sciences with all levels included for each. Users could land on one of these pages without knowing what other options there were. We needed to standardize in a way that gave users more immediate visibility into what the degree options were without overwhelming them.
Through our workshop conversations and recommendations, the SNHU team reduced the number of page levels to the homepage, Area of Study page, and Individual Degree page, cutting down on hundreds of unique pages. This allowed us to provide far easier navigation for the users, with an added benefit being simplified internal content management of the site moving forward. Much of the content bloat from the old site was cut out, in favor of presenting the most important, concise information in order to get the student interested enough to sign up to be contacted.
As an example in the previous site, Marketing Degrees had nine category pages that all linked to degree pages, creating four levels of page hierarchy. Now we could reduce that to a simplified, single page linking to the individual degrees, thereby cutting the hierarchy in half.
I created a style tile to update the look and feel to be more modern and match SNHU's current branding. Another goal was to make the web style more readable by updating the typography, eliminating low-contrast text, improving the visual signifiers of interactive elements, and optimizing the design for viewing on mobile devices.
I worked with the stakeholders to create standardized responsive web page templates that could work for all degree types and levels, iterating through many versions and testing with users. Each individual page is meant to stand on its own, as user may land directly on a page for a specific degree from a search engine. Thus every page every page had the accreditation and benefits of SNHU so users could make the decision to be contacted from only viewing a single page. Breadcrumbs also helped users understand where they were within the site.
I created a typographic hierarchy to clearly categorize and define types of degrees. The top-level categories of Associate's, Bachelor's, and Master's could have different groups of degrees within, like a Master of Arts versus a Master of Science.
The call-to-action form was visually emphasized to draw the eye. The site now better reflected SNHU's updated brand and was visually and functionally a consistent experience.
The site now better reflected SNHU's updated brand and was visually and functionally a consistent experience.
Being fully responsive meant that prospective students could use any device to view the site with much better readability and the best possible experience.
Breadcrumbs, an improved menu and clear labeling via typographic hierarchy now made it much clearer to users where they were on the site, and much easier for them to navigate through it to find the information they wanted.
The call-to-action form to request information from an admissions counselor was now a streamlined experience with fewer fields, clear labeling and instructions, and better error validation. This led to more conversions and fewer drop-offs, thus meeting the primary goal of the project.