Who says a thorough, user-centric website redesign can’t be done on a budget using only internal resources? Not the folks at MidAmerica Nazarene University, that’s for sure.
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Project: Website Redesign Institution: MidAmerica Nazarene University Target audience: Prospective students, parents, alumni, donors Launch date: 08/01/2013 Submitted by: Kim Campbell, Director of Marketing
Project Description
In spring 2012, the office of Marketing & Communications at MidAmerica Nazarene University determined the need for a comprehensive review of the external MNU.edu website. Lots of major issues in play: internal content for faculty, staff and students, giant size (2000+ pages), poor content for external users, inconsistent design and poor search engine ranking.
Outside bids were just too high, so we decided to use our tiny staff of six employees to completely rebuild the site ourselves. We spent less than $2,500 and used only internal staff on the entire project. It took 12 months to re-write, re-strategize, re-structure and re-design the beast, but we built a site that is laser focused on external users! It’s even won some awards and we’re super happy to inspire other teams who may be considering a project of this magnitude.
Our Goals:
- Increase online applications and information requests
- Better articulate MNU’s distinctives and brand
- Increase accessibility and usability of the site
- Provide better academic program information
- Provide easier access to the information users want
- Communicate campus life through news and events
Scope of Work
Deliverables
- Brand messaging
- Competitive audit / analysis
- User research
- User personas
- Information architecture sitemap
- CMS template
Page type
- Webpage
Content type
- Text
- Photo
- Video
- Audio
- Interactive
- User-generated
