Minnesota State redesign
Minnesota State Community and Technical College
Minnesota State Community and Technical College (“M State”) offers degrees, career and technical training across four different campuses in northern Minnesota (plus online).
Like every school, there is a continuous need for good marketing and digital tools to attract and retain students, while promoting the outcomes and success stories of their students. But the previous website posed several challenges.
The overall design was dated in appearance. Content was too sparse in key areas, while too long in others. The navigation was overly long and deep, and landing pages lacked clear calls to action. Prospective students weren’t being told the story of why M State might be right for them.
They knew they needed to revise and refresh their site, and an experienced partner to help lead the process.
Electric Citizen was hired based on their experience working with higher ed and the Web, from content strategy and user experience to visual design and web development.
We began the project with strategy, reviewing site analytics while conducting a series of interactive workshops and interviews with key stakeholders. We mapped our findings to the content inventory, and defined a content framework, tying future content creation to our strategic goals.
To improve user experience, we reworked the primary navigation, seeking to simplify where possible, and refocus the pathways towards prospective students. Through user testing, we adjusted and refined our results.
Next we worked through a series of wireframes and page mockups, defining both the overall look and feel of the site design while offering recommendations on specific content areas of focus. The new homepage, for example, emphasizes a new primary CTA (“Your future starts at MState”), followed by success stats, success stories, and a new section highlighting school programs for future employment.
With a strategic brief of our findings and recommendations, along with detailed page mockups and style guide, MState had a new blueprint for success.
Their internal marketing team proceeded to implement the redesign online, with some technical consulting provided by our dev team as needed, and were able to begin the next school year with a stronger online presence.
