Hunter Business School
The new website addressed both the staff and student’s UX issues while increasing, within the first three months after launch, lead generation by 52%.
Project Type
Website Redesign
Project Type
Education
Client
Hunter Business School was founded in 1972 for the purpose of providing quality career training through intensive and innovative programs. The original mission was developed in 1972 when the school was first founded. With a change of ownership in 1999, the school expanded to include new Allied Health programs such as Medical Assistant and Computer Technology.
Goal
Hunter Business School’s goal in redesigning their website was to have a mobile friendly responsive WordPress website that allows both prospective and current students to easily access relevant information with smart intuitive navigation and for the website to be easier for the staff to edit and maintain.
The Problem
Hunter Business School’s website was outdated, broken, convoluted and unresponsive. Because the existing website lacked a responsive design, Hunter was using an unreliable WordPress theme switching plugin as a work around.
This made maintaining the website unnecessarily difficult. To make matters worse, because of years of bad practices, their MySQL database had become corrupted beyond repair. All of these issues compounded into a loss of prospective student leads and frustrated current students and staff. The lack of leads also meant new programs and curriculums, such as the new Evening Classes and Web Application Design and Development program, were not generating any interest.
Solution
Alex Cruz and I utilized a clean modern design, which matched Hunter’s newly created branding, to project an image of Hunter Business School as a fun and welcoming environment with industry leading education.
A major focus of the project was to increase enrollment in Hunter’s evening programs and courses outside of the medical profession. The call-to-action that was most predominantly featured in the redesigned website was the newly created Request Info form. The Request Info form was a simplified version of their existing Student Inquiries for, which was hyper focused on quality lead generation. Hunter expressed one of the most important user goals, outside of filling out and submitting the Request Info form, was for current and past students to find employment opportunities directly on the Hunter Business School website.
My Role
UX Design
UX Research
Information Architecture
Front-End Development
Monthly Maintenance
Project Timeline
9 Weeks Total
Research and Strategic Planning
With only 9 weeks to complete the project, it was even more critical to get the Strategic Planning and Research right. I truly believe that the more time that is given to Research and Planning, the greater the chances of success for a project.
Stakeholder and User Interviews
I begin every project with Stakeholder and User Interviews. I believe that it is mission critical to have all parties involved as much as possible with any project, especially when there is a tight deadline. I wanted to find out what both the User’s and Stakeholder’s pain points are as early as possible. Luckily, both Hunter Business School’s staff and students were more than accommodating. The insights that were gained from the interviewing process, greatly affected the direction of the project.
Personas
Hunter Business School’s Admissions Department keeps extensive information on the students who both attend and apply for the school. This allowed me to develop my Personas with pinpoint accuracy. With the information that I obtained from the Stakeholder and User Interviews, I was able to discover not only the characteristics of the students who attend the school, but also the gaps in enrollment. Hunter Business School had no issues with filling-up their classrooms with female students looking to get into the medical fields, but had a hard time enticing potential students to enroll into the courses that are historically more male dominate.
Juanita, 33
- African American
- Deer Park, NY
- Single with 1 child
- Telemarketing
- $33K
- Some College
About Juanita
Juanita is a single mother who rents a one bedroom apartment with her daughter. She is a manager at a telemarketing company that is about 45 minutes from where she lives. Juanita is very organized and knows how to manage a team. Her strong outgoing personality and being able multi-task is what helped her get the management position at her current job. Juanita’s dream is to one day own her own business. She is not one hundred percent sure what business she would like to run, but hopes that while she is working towards her degree in business she will figure out what she wants to do.
Goals & Needs
Juanita qualifies for financial aid because she is a single mother and does not make a lot of money. Some of the complications Juanita is running into are finding the perfect school that has flexible classes to fit into her crazy schedule, balancing work and taking care of her child. She would also like to find a school that can fit her budget and even offer some solutions on leaving her child at a daycare. Juanita has been doing research on the best school that could fit all her needs and offer the best courses that would get her into the career of her dreams, owning her own business. Juanita likes to plan ahead, so she is looking to get as much information as she can on courses she would be taking and creating a schedule for her busy life.
Characteristics
- Active person (gym and yoga)
- Loves to cook
- Go Getter
- Organized/Likes to plan ahead
- Spends a lot of her time with her daughter when she is not working
Carlos, 21
- Hispanic
- Amityville, NY
- Single
- Unemployed
- GED
About Carlos
Carlos has been in and out of work. He makes a marginal income by taking small helping jobs here and there. Carlos’s hobby is building computers from scratch. He has always loved tinkering with computers and trying to problem solve various computer related issues. He has been thinking of going to college for computer networking/repair, but because Carlos’s parents make too much money he does not qualify for financial aid and cannot afford to go to college. Carlos stumbled upon Hunter Business School and is looking for the best solution that will allow him to go to college and begin his journey to become a computer technician.
Goals & Needs
Carlos’s goal is to land a great job in the computer networking field. Carlos would love to become a master for computer repair and even make money on the side repairing computers for anyone looking to get their computer fixed; even friends and family. Carlos needs the best solution to solve his financial issues allowing him to go to school and pursue his dream. He also wants to find out more about Hunter Business School’s Computer Technician program and what courses are offered. Carlos would also like to know if Hunter Business School has a job placement program that helps him land the job of his dreams.
Characteristics
- Laid back, a little introvert and loves being around his family
- Repairing and Rebuilding computers as a hobby
- Plays video games and also loves to play baseball with his friends
- A little disorganized also has a messy desk with computer parts all over
- Enjoys the simple things in life
Krystal, 21
- Caucasian
- Oceanside, NY
- Dating
- Retail
- $22K
- High School Diploma
About Krystal
Krystal is an all-around sweet person and is loved by everyone. Krystal is very helpful around the house and assists her mother with caring for her grandmother. Krystal would love to become a Licensed Practical Nurse because she loves to help people. Her parents had put aside a college savings for her at birth and she has the funds to attend any college. Krystal is currently searching the right college/school for her to earn a degree. She is looking for a reputable place on Long Island with job placement. Because Krystal works retail, she has day and night shifts and needs to find a school with courses that will fit her crazy schedule. Right now, Krystal has been doing research on schools with great reviews and a high record of job placement when students graduate.
Goals & Needs
Krystal’s goal is to become an LPN. She needs to find a reputable school that offers both day and night classes, which will fit her crazy schedule. In High School, she loved getting involved in after school programs and would like to find a school that has a great community of students.
Characteristics
- Active person (hiking and tennis)
- Loves getting involved with non-profit organizations that give back to the community
- Very caring person
- Organized
Competitive Analysis
For me, besides Stakeholder and User Interviews, the most important aspect of any successful project is a Competitive Analysis. Both are tools that I utilized throughout the project. Between the interviews and my own research, I had uncovered a comprehensive list of for-profit educational institutes. This list included direct, indirect and tertiary competition that Hunter Business School was either unaware of or had not previously considered.
- Welcoming Homepage
- Simple Clean Menu Structure
- Achievements on Homepage
- Detailed Footer Structure
- Registration Start & Next Session
- Dates on Home Page
- Strong Community Presence on Homepage
- Student Form on Home Page
- Queens & Manhattan Campus
- Online Degree
- Simple Menu Structure
- Request & Apply Button at top
- Simple Clean Menu Structure
- Sticky Header
- Detailed Footer Structure
- Program Spotlight Homepage
- New Program Spotlight
- Contact info on top
- News on Homepage
- Clean Menu Structure
- Student Form in Program Pages
- Well Written Program Descriptions
- Defining Hero Images for each program
Opportunity
The interviewing process and competitive analysis uncovered many opportunities for improvement. The biggest opportunities came from my analysis for Hunter’s business model. The entire organization centered around their Student Inquiries form. This form was their main source of lead generation. The students were extremely passionate and proud of their school. They yearned for community but were often left frustrated by the lack of insight and information on the website. Also, Hunter offered many benefits, such as employment opportunities and refresher courses for student who had already graduated.
Information Architecture
One of the biggest challenges that I encountered during this process was organizing the 1,327 pages that made up the existing website. Hunter Business School’s website navigation and structure was a series of patches that might have made sense in the beginning but became increasingly unmanageable. Between my competitive analysis and organizational techniques, I was able to condense and organize the 1,327 pages into 153 pages at launch.
Card Sorting
Hunter’s website header was cluttered with 15 main content groups. Through a series of card sorting sessions, Alex and I were able to group all of the content into 8 main categories. These categories were Why Hunter, Programs, Hunter Life, Careers, Admissions, Tuition and Financial Aid, Staff and Facility and Contact. Unfortunately, because of the stakeholder and government regulation, I was unable to reduce the Hunter’s website navigation down to less than 8 main categories.
Sitemap
With the information obtained from the productive card sorting sessions and feedback from the stakeholder, I was able to create a Sitemap that put all of our ideas into practice. Hunter Business School has two campuses. During the interviewing process, I learned of a playful rivalry between both campuses. One of the discoveries when working on the Sitemap was Hunter’s desire to combine certain aspects of the campuses and to keep others separate. This was most evident in the Job Opportunities section. Against our recommendation, the stakeholders wanted to keep the job opportunities that each campus posted to the website separate.
Design
The idea for redesigning the website came after Alex Cruz completed the successful rebranding of Hunter Business School. Their website had now become so outdated that it clashed with the new direction the school was heading. Because of his intimate knowledge of the brand, he was in charge of UI Design and Brand Association.
Branding
Building upon the research he conducted while rebranding Hunter Business School, Alex was able to determine the Brand Attributes, which helped us make informed discussions while assessing the website’s design and functionality.
Brand Attributes Consist of:
- Culture = Hospitable
- Customer = Friendly
- Voice = Professional
- Benefit = Accomplished
- Value = Worry Free
- X-Factor = High Placement Rate and Refresher courses at no cost
Typography & Color Pallet
Headings
Montserrat Bold
Body Text
Open Sans
Color Pallet
#212121
#112240
#22447f
#4488ff
#757575
#bdbdbd
#efe0e0
Mockups
Homepage
Mobile Menu
Programs Page
Evening Programs
Job Listings
Career Services
Administration and Staff
Textbooks and Supplies
Textbooks and Supplies
Student Inquiries Form
Originally, the Student Inquires form consisted of 17 fields and was buried inside the Contact dropdown menu. From my research, I learned that this form was the cornerstone of the entire organization.
I decided to make the form more accessible and easier to fill-out so that lead generation would increase. I reduced the number of fields down from 17 to 6, placed the form inside the header on almost all pages and renamed it Request Info. The form was renamed because during testing, when asked, none of the participants knew what a Student Inquires form was but understood the purpose of a Request Info form.
One of the technical hurtles I encountered was that I could not combined first and last names into one field because the lead tracking software that Hunter was using could not process those entries. The company in charge of the lead tracking software said the backend for their software would need to be rewritten and the cost to do so was prohibitive.
Original
New Request Info Form
Development
After the main design systems and prototypes were approved, I started the development process. Because of the size of the website and diversity of content, I wanted to take a modular approach to the individual sections and components. The website needed to be versatile and easy to edit.
Hosting
The original Hunter Business School website was being hosted by a local Long Island company. Unfortunately, while on their servers, the website was plagued by disruptions in service and outages. One of the first things that I did once we took on this project was migrate the Hunter website to Alex’s GoDaddy servers. However, GoDaddy's automatic WordPress maintenance tools frequently deleted parts of the original Hunter website. A solution that the marketing company, Becker, came up with was to transfer the website to their hosting company Pantheon. Pantheon is an amazing Git focused WordPress hosting platform that truly made development and maintenance incredibly easy with their Dev, Test and Live workflow.
WordPress Theme Development
I began developing Hunter’s custom WordPress theme using my own custom version of Underscores by Automattic as my starting point. I used Underscores for my custom theme development starting point because it offers a good neutral foundation and is maintained by the same people who develop WordPress Core.
I used the Advanced Custom Fields WordPress plugin to make updating and maintaining the website as easy as possible. The team in charge of updating the website wouldn’t need to guess if a header is an H2 or H3, they would simply type into the header Advanced Custom Field. Advanced Custom Fields also allowed the website to be more modular because it you wanted to move a content block, you could simply click and drag it to the desired location. It also made the custom components available to the Hunter staff with the click of a button instead of having to copy and paste a piece of code from another page.
Gravity Forms
Before this project, I had never worked with Gravity Forms before. However, I chose to utilize the Gravity Forms plugin for all the Hunter Business School contact forms because of both the client and marketing company’s familiarity with the plugin. I found styling the Request Info Header Form particularly challenging because the baked-in styles were deeply embedded into the plugin and needed to be rewritten to accommodate the small area.
QC, Launch and Testing
Launch Day came and went without any major issues or bugs. Alex and I had managed to populate the website with 153 pages of content. Pantheon’s WordPress hosting platform helped ensure an error free launch with their Git based Dev, Test and Launch system. The three-stage process allowed the team to spot any potential issues and correct them. The client was shocked that everything worked out of the box. Apparently, the last time Hunter redid their website they had several issues.
Missing Content
A week after the launch of the website the Google Analytics report showed an issue. In order to meet the tight deadline, the client and I decided not to migrate several of the News Articles from the old website. However, some of the articles were major drivers of organic traffic. I immediately started fixing the issues by identifying the articles that had the highest impact and started adding them to the site.
Testing
After launch, I started performing A/B Testing to increase the effectiveness of the new Request Info form. By changing the original dark blue Get Started submit button to a bright orange, I was able to increase submissions by an additional 5%.
Before
After
Alterations
Looking at the Heatmap data and information from User Interviews, I determinate that the homepage needed tweaking.
When Alex and I came up with the concept for the homepage, we wanted to prominently feature only one course and show only three other courses below. The prominent course would be the newly launch Web App and Development course and the three courses below would be the courses with the lowest enrollment. This sounded like a good idea, but failed in practice. What generated more engagement was having all the courses equally displayed on the homepage.
Before
After
Results
The finished website was an overwhelming success. Within the first three months, the new Request Info form increased lead generation by 52%.
With further testing, I was able to increase lead generation by an additional 5% by changing the Get Started submit button from the original dark blue to a bright orange. The modular system that utilized Advanced Custom Fields significantly decreased the amount of time it took the Hunter Business School staff to edit the website. As one person on the Hunter team put it, “I used to spend hours at night updating the website.”