Title

Increasing engagement with education department

Project Summary
Office of Higher Ed
Featured Image
young adult college students talking together outside
Project Overview

The Minnesota Office of Higher Education (“OHE”) serves millions of individuals and families statewide, connecting students to financial aid and resources needed to make college possible.

Sections
screenshot of OHE homepage
Challenge

The department’s flagship website was hindered by confusing navigation, a dated and inaccessible design, and legacy software that was difficult for editors to manage.

OHE needed an experienced partner to lead a full redesign and rebuild that would improve usability, accessibility, and long-term sustainability.

screenshot of OHE web pages
Solutions

Improved UX

We began our engagement with an extensive review of the current site navigation, and how it was serving (or not serving) the target audience and department goals.

Through user testing, we were able to refine and adjust our recommendations prior to finalizing a much simpler and easy-to-understand approach.

Design Refresh

Building upon state branding guidelines, we introduced a new, more modern look and feel to the website that emphasized greater warmth and human interaction, while providing a calming layout to contrast the content-heavy needs of the client.

As we neared launch, we again conducted usability testing with volunteers, making additional recommendations and adjustments to the design and layout where needed to improve user experience.

Technical Improvements

From a technical standpoint, our team led the client through technical discovery, identifying the technical and editorial requirements of the client, and how to migrate all of their existing content out of a dated (Cold Fusion) content management system. 

OHE had an internal developer who wished to take over ongoing site maintenance for the new site, and our team was able to train them on best practices and developer operations along the way. 

Post-launch showed measurable gains, including an 8% increase in average engagement time, a 19% increase in pages per session, a 6% increase in form submissions, and a 23% improvement in mobile performance.

The new CMS empowered staff with greater control and sustainability, ensuring the site can evolve with the needs of Minnesota students and families. The new site won multiple design awards since launch.
19%
More pages viewed per session
8%
Increase in engagement time
23%
Better mobile performance