Reviewing website content

The Challenge

This leading university knew that their website was a key information source for their current students & as part of their ongoing strategy to improve this, they wanted to understand how two of their key stakeholders (staff and current students) used and interacted with their website.

This would enable them to determine how to best re-design its content to ensure it is fit to address the needs and expectations of both key stakeholders. To ultimately improve user experience, address key pain points and identify both short- and long-term solutions for addressing these needs.

Our approach

To address this challenge, we designed a qualitative research approach to enable the university to fully explore in detail the views of both staff and students.

Staff exploration workshops were designed to explore how key teams across the university used the website to provide vital content for students throughout key stages of their journey, as well as understand issues / areas for improvement.

Student ‘bitch & build’ online workshops were conducted to specifically address their key information needs and pain points experienced whilst navigating the current website, to help pinpoint improvements.

The outcome

The research revealed that there are four overarching student needs when looking for information on the website – there is a need for the website to be efficient, personalised, engaging and accessible.

By really digging into current students’ key pain points around navigation, content and search functions, we provided the university with a clear understanding of what is not currently working for their users and key areas to improve user experience.

This insight has enabled the university to develop their thinking and implement the next phase of their website re-design project.