King's College

King’s had recently completed a rebrand, with a strong focus on their enrollment messages of access, affordability, and upward mobility. Our job was to maintain the brand across the site– translating identity into a component system flexible enough for real editor options, consistent enough to protect the brand everywhere.

As Roger Bridges, NewCity’s Design Director, puts it: “Strong systems don’t eliminate creative possibilities – they create the conditions for them.” The old system’s rigid templating meant any variation required a custom build. The new component library let a program page, a faculty profile, and a campaign landing page each feel distinct while remaining unmistakably King’s. Navigation was redesigned around how prospective students actually think, not how the institution was organized internally.

A system built to scale – and a CMS that made it governable

The component library – built by NewCity in Storybook, implemented in Cascade by Hannon Hill – gave King’s two distinct structural advantages. First, Hannon Hill implemented Cascade using structured content types for information like academic programs, faculty profiles, and events. These allow authors to enter content within defined fields, ensuring data and design consistency across the site while still giving editors flexibility.

Second, reusable content blocks allow administrators to update something like an admissions deadline in one place, without hunting it down across multiple pages – reducing editorial burden and the risk of publishing outdated information. This also made it possible for Ryan to optimize over 60 program pages for search engines during the year after the site launch. 

The Cascade CMS also helped the team develop a governance plan that worked for them. Where before King’s had no staging environment and no content review process, Cascade let them scope access, stage changes, and route content through approval. Leadership changes after launch meant King’s moved toward a centralized drafting and approval process within marketing – but the platform made that quality control possible. Now they have a governance system and tools in place that they can adapt to their unique organizational priorities.

Two years later, the numbers are worth celebrating

Slate form submissions up 23.4%

Comparing May 2024–May 2026 to the prior two years, Slate form submissions (event registrations, applications, deposits) increased by 23.4%. “That’s pretty telling,” Ryan said, “considering that’s our major metric in terms of engagement with the site.”

Organic traffic up 10%

King’s grew its organic session share from 62% to 68% – roughly a 10% increase in engaged sessions. Most institutions have seen organic traffic drop 10–15% since AI-generated search overviews became prominent. King’s grew through that headwind, in part by optimizing 60 program pages for search engine performance in 2025 – work the structured content model made tractable at scale.

First-year enrollment at a six-year high

First-year applications, admits, and net deposits are all at a six-year high in 2025–26. The website, the shift to digital marketing, and a sustained SEO effort all contributed – and all depended on a site built to support them.