From the Nominator

Along with the launch of a new brand strategy, Randolph-Macon took on a full site redesign, addressing significant obstacles: (1) an aging site infrastructure on a content-management system (CMS) platform that was available to far-too-many publishers, making the site hard to govern; (2) too many text-heavy pages that often included redundant information; (3) hundreds of long-forgotten pages; and (4) many college priorities muddying site navigation for our audience of prospective students and their families. Our plan for rethinking the site was coordinated with the college’s first-ever brand strategy. The projects occurred nearly concurrently; as the brand work was in development, we began planning for the migration of rmc.edu to WordPress. We re-engineered the information architecture, with guidance from an internal committee. We redesigned and rewrote all major landing pages and added new ones. We collapsed hundreds of low-content pages into longer, more robust pages. We selected new imagery across the site, migrated 1000+ news stories with a new category and tagging system, and added an event calendar to replace a non-mobile-friendly calendar that was poorly used. The site’s launch coincided with a significant uptick in key admissions metrics, including a 30% increase in campus visits, a 27% increase in applications, and a 37% increase in deposits year over year. In comparison with old site data, we've observed huge improvements in our bounce rate, a 15% increase in web inquiries, and a 15% improvement in engagement time on the site.

From the Judges

This entry has a lot going for it: excellent outcomes demonstrated in the metrics, easy navigation, vibrant imagery, and quality control down to the subpages. The interior pages are especially clear with bold headlines and succinctly written copy that's accessible and friendly. We appreciated the consideration of user interaction with fixed navigation elements, subtle hover effects, and a less-common collapsible side menu.