A Redesign to Attract Diverse Prospective Students

Evolving Web worked closely with York’s School of Continuing Studies to design and launch a new, sales and performance-focused website. The School offers continuing professional education programs to students from Canada and around the world, providing career development opportunities to a wide range of students, and helping York University reach enrolment targets. For these reasons, the website is a critical component to the success not only of the School but York University as a whole.

The website redesign focused on helping users discover, research, and apply to programs, improving the e-commerce experience for purchasing programs, and updating the visual design to differentiate York’s School of Continuing Studies in the university ecosystem, while adhering to the brand guidelines.

The School of Continuing Studies within York University is a large and complex education enterprise providing English language instruction and continuing professional education programs to students in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and select parts of the Canadian market. The School serves the diverse needs of international students seeking to obtain language and post-secondary education to excel in Canada. It also serves domestic students seeking to upgrade their professional education, change careers, or obtain a Canadian education or credential.

Our goal was to redesign the content and user experience of the School’s website to drive prospective students to apply or enroll in programs, tailoring the experience to each of York’s distinct markets. We needed to create stronger lead management integrations, and a quicker checkout process for students looking to enroll.

For prospective students, the goal was to differentiate the School by highlighting key elements of its value proposition through the use of engaging, storytelling content. For applied and enrolled students, the goal was to redefine the journey and develop a more comprehensive workflow so they can find information with as few clicks as possible.

The School of Continuing Studies has four distinct markets, and user journeys need to be uniquely defined by market. The website is part of a multi-channel marketing approach to managing lead generation programs, including a robust digital marketing program. The School generates revenue for York University and provides a funnel of undergraduate and graduate students to meet its enrolment targets. Increasing the website’s SEO value and supporting the other channels by which students discover the School was essential for the University as a whole.

We designed a new customer journey based on analysis of past performance, target audiences and value propositions, and a UX workshop with internal and external stakeholders. We then redesigned and optimized the navigation and landing pages. We implemented the new designs in WordPress in accordance with York University’s brand standards. The new website is based on York University’s standard WordPress install. 

Our work included: 

• Designing a new, optimized homepage that incorporates the customer journey, navigation bar, and identifies core target audiences;
• Creating a captivating visual design that elevates and differentiates the School while still adhering to university brand guidelines;
• Improving the content strategy and user experience (UX) for program pages, as well as pages for registered and prospective students, key policy pages, and campaign landing pages;
• Improving the All Programs page with a search and filter functionality, so users can easily find the programs they need;
• Developing content that adheres to brand guidelines and follows SEO best practices;
• Training university staff to enhance content strategy, while coordinating content rewriting and entry;
• Tracking key events on landing and confirmation pages to measure the success of campaigns and content investments;
• Simplifying program pages to effectively communicate the program experience, benefits, and requirements without overwhelming users;
• Implementing an SEO strategy to boost rankings and resolve issues stemming from changes in information architecture;
• Integrating with Modern Campus and Destiny to meet the School’s e-commerce requirements;
• Integrating Salesforce Pro and WordPress Gravity Forms to enable the university to track user engagement and capture leads.
   

The redesign of the School of Continuing Studies website successfully enhanced York University's ability to attract and engage prospective students. The new design tailored the user experience to York’s distinct markets, helping users seamlessly explore, apply, and enroll in programs. Key value propositions were highlighted through engaging storytelling, differentiating the School from its competitors. For current and enrolled students, the streamlined user journey provided quick access to essential information. The integration of stronger lead management tools and an expedited checkout process further supported the university’s enrollment goals. This transformation aligns with York’s broader communications strategy, boosting the School’s visibility and contributing to the university’s continued success in meeting enrollment targets.