Johnson & Wales University

We kicked off the project with a team team onsite meeting in Providence. Our partnership was bolstered by audience research, which Matt later told us was “absolutely necessary for us to have internal governance conversations later, which all centered around what’s not working, what we know users want and aren’t getting”. 

We found:

• Program pages obscured what students look for. An early RFI form and a “false footer” effect made testers stop scrolling, so many missed curriculum, internship stats, and salaries. 
• Navigation was inconsistent. Testers skipped top-level pages, ignored the sticky nav, and scrolled back to the top for the menu. 
• RFI forms interrupted the search. Admissions pages drew strong engagement while RFI forms underperformed. On the online homepage, a form disguised as a program finder turned off most testers by asking for personal information before they got any program information.
• Campus locations were unclear. Only one tester correctly identified all three locations, and most placed JWU in Charlotte. Program pages also gave little sign that a program is offered on both campuses.

Their main goals were to:

• Solve their usability issue around the two campuses, and help users understand the structure and locations of JWU. 
• Increase awareness of JWU as a 4 year university with strong program offerings, where culinary focused students could get a “normal” college experience, and where non-culinary students could learn in a practical and innovative environment
• Move to a centralized web governance model, lead by marketing, and help empower editors to be storytellers
• Increase AI and GEO search discoverability

With a roadmap in place, the team moved onto the CMS evaluation. JWU knew they wanted to use an AI search tool before they chose a CMS. After an exhaustive review, they chose WordPress because it matched their team’s skills, moved governance from IT to marketing, and allowed new features to be added without custom coding.

What surprised the team was how central SearchStax became to the project.  As NewCity web developer Mike Henderson said, “it wasn’t just a plug-in, it was a true integration. He added, “but it wasn’t an out-of-the-box thing. You have to create what you want to see.” 

Search tools are often added after a site is built, crawling existing pages and returning a standard list of results. For JWU, we built the CMS, content model, and taxonomies together, around how SearchStax works, so visitors can browse results in tabs for degree programs, faculty profiles, news, and events. Within each tab, filters help visitors narrow what they see, such as event type, audience, and campus. To make that work, we planned the categories behind each filter with JWU’s team early in the project, and the site passes that information to SearchStax in a structured form it can read.

The program pages show what this structure does for visitors. JWU has two campuses, and the old site didn’t always make that clear. Some students toured the wrong campus for their major, and visitors who landed on a Providence program page assumed that was their only option. So we built each program page as a content hub that answers key questions in one place. Each hub highlights campus locations, degree versions, and the full curriculum, so visitors can compare options without leaving the page. Search supports the same idea. Programs can be filtered by college, degree level, and campus, and results in the Programs tab lead to the main program page, so students see the full picture.