Breathing life into a stale university website.

University Website - Case Study

Website design | UI UX | Web development

Zelikow School for Jewish Non-profit management reached out to lean mean creative machine to help revamp their entire digital experience with a focus on improving usability and student recruitment.

Challenge

How do we build a digital experience that invites exploration while also painting a vivid picture of life as a student?

0 %

Increase in users

0 %

Increase in Time on site

0 %

Increase in session visits

ZSJNM came to Lean Mean Creative Machine to rethink their entire digital experience. The school had an outdated look and feel and low online application numbers. Our goal was to design an experience that both spoke to young potential students while also ensuring ease of navigation throughout the website's vast network of resources.

How we did it

SOlution

1. An emphasis on imagery

First and foremost, we needed the website to do a better job of painting a picture of what life is like as a student at the ZSchool. The campus is beautiful, the people are friendly, why aren’t we showcasing some of our greatest features?

New Homepage

OLD Homepage

SOlution

2. Consolidated messaging

Rather than overwhelm the users with an overload of information and a wall of text, we worked with Zschool to identify key messaging points and then massaged those into concise, condensed headlines to draw users deeper into the web experience.

SOlution

3. Improved information architecture

Because the school offers such a variety of program options for students and spoke to such a broad range of potential audiences, their old site quickly became cumbersome to navigate. In short, it was really hard to find the information you needed or get a full grasp of everything Zschool had to offer.

Enhanced Navigation

We started by reimagining the navigation, creating visual hierarchy, consolidating nav items under categories, and highlighting clear calls to action — with a focus on "Apply".

Program Overview

Now the students have the ability to browse a high level overview of all the programs rather than being forced to pick one route and dive straight into the deep end. This increased the likelihood that potential students would browse through the programs which ultimately made them more likely to commit and apply.

0 %

Increase in users

0 %

Increase in Time on site

0 %

Increase in session visits

In the end, not only did we make a much more organized and user-centric interface but we increased metrics across the board — nearly doubling the traffic and vastly increasing the number of online applications almost 10 times over.

Breathing life into a stale university website.

University Website - Case Study

Website design | UI UX | Web development

Zelikow School for Jewish Non-profit management reached out to lean mean creative machine to help revamp their entire digital experience with a focus on improving usability and student recruitment.

Challenge

How do we build a digital experience that invites exploration while also painting a vivid picture of life as a student?

SOlution

1. An emphasis on imagery

New Homepage

OLD Homepage

SOlution

2. Consolidated messaging

SOlution

3. Improved information architecture

Enhanced Navigation

We started by reimagining the navigation, creating visual hierarchy, consolidating nav items under categories, and highlighting clear calls to action — with a focus on "Apply".

Program Overview

In the end, not only did we make a much more organized and user-centric interface but we increased metrics across the board — nearly doubling the traffic and vastly increasing the number of online applications almost 10 times over.

Lets Talk!