Nuts &
Bolts
Timeline
December 2017 —Present
Project Scope
- Discovery and audience research
- Project strategy blueprint
- UX and information architecture
- Content strategy, copywriting, and messaging
- Governance and editorial training
- Pattern library design and front end development
- Measurement framework and analytics tracking
CMS
Omni CMS
Third-Party Integrations
Trumba, Slate
Site Size
250+ content pages at first launch, 23,000+ pages in the domain overall
A Web Presence as Bold as OSU Itself
Oklahoma State University (OSU) is a powerhouse public institution deeply rooted in its land grant legacy. It has a rich history in research, business, engineering, and agriculture. From large urban centers to small agricultural communities, it plays an integral role in the overall health and financial well being of the state of Oklahoma.
Designing a Campus-Wide Strategy
After a nationwide search, OSU chose to partner with NewCity for a complete overhaul and redesign of its top-level pages. Our collective teams saw this project as an opportunity to bring together disparate university entities into a completely new design system that not only conveyed a bold and renewed sense of identity at the top level pages, but could also be extended throughout the school’s entire online ecosystem beyond this initial engagement.
Since our initial project with OSU began, we’ve expanded the work to include a redesign of all of the College level websites, the Department of Housing and Residential Life website, and the massive Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources web presence. These additional sites are using the design system and component library developed during our initial engagement and are currently in development and have not launched yet.
How it all Started
OSU knew their target audiences, brand, and institutional goals were suffering because of an outdated, ineffective, and difficult to manage web presence. Their online environment was disjointed and confusing for users. With no consistent design, brand identity, or global navigation – colleges, schools, departments, and other units were distanced from each other. They were all talking about the same university, but it didn’t seem as if they were actually part of the same, unified institution.
Building the Blueprint for OSU’s Digital Future
We kicked off the project with an in depth discovery and research process which allowed our teams to forge a shared knowledge base and set strategic goals and priorities for the project. We conducted multiple days of onsite planning workshops with key stakeholder groups (students, faculty, staff, leadership, etc) and coupled the information we learned in person with intercept and email surveys, comparative usability testing, competitive analysis, and a review of their current websites through Google Analytics and other tools. Our combined teams reviewed massive amounts of content in order to get a sense of the size and proportions of their various websites. This helped us boil down essential user pathways (that would later influence the navigation menus and overarching information architecture) as well as clearly defining conversion paths for their admissions process.
Our strategy for OSU was captured in this Project Strategy Blueprint, which provides a one-page document we can return to throughout the project to keep everyone focused.
Measuring Digital Success
To better track their institutional goals, we created an in-depth measurement framework for OSU. They didn’t previously have guiding principles for using any of the data they were collecting, so we helped them build an effective measurement plan with dashboards that allow them to translate their strategic objectives into quantifiable goals.
Design System + Brand In Action
Working within the new navigation structure, we then built in places for OSU to feature prominent calls to action (CTAs) and show its personality and what it means to be a student there. We used the design system to create bold patterns the OSU team could use to route people via on-page content as opposed to crowding templates with navigation links. We also enabled them to show off their differentiators with large facts and numerals, bold headline text, and, of course, lots of orange (America’s Brightest Orange).
Tools for Longevity and Growth
But we couldn’t just focus on the project in front of us. Throughout this engagement we had to keep in mind that this system would eventually stretch to all corners of OSU’s digital platform, so longevity and maintenance were key. An example of this was our addition of on-site content training workshops and pattern library training into the scope of work, instilling confidence in the team to carry the site forward after launch.
Key Sections Go Live for Prospective Students
In January 2019 we launched the homepage and other sections of the site focused on prospective students’ key user paths such as:
- About
- Academic programs
- Scholarships and financial aid
- Undergraduate admissions
- Student life
Scaling the System Across Units and Colleges
The goal was to eventually bring other departments and units into the new design system. After the relaunch of the main okstate.edu, we worked with all of the Colleges within OSU, OSU’s Division of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, and the Department of Housing and Residential Life to transform their web presences as well. These projects leveraged all of the design patterns and tools we created for central marketing and undergraduate admissions. This allowed us to use funds at the unit level to focus on their audiences and content, rather than writing a lot of new code or designing all new components from the ground up.
A big focus of this project was to completely redesign OSU’s academic program pages to appeal to prospective and existing students alike. The Admissions department was a integral part of this process.
Content Strategy, Training, and Development
As part of the project NewCity developed a detailed Content Work Plan for OSU. Then we taught content workshops with editors across campus, coaching them through recreating key pages in their sites using the new OSU design system.
NewCity wrote and edited copy for many high priority pages in the new site including the home page, About OSU, Undergraduate Academics, Student Life, Student Support, Undergraduate Admissions, and Financial Aid.
Beyond the content we created for OSU directly, we provided weekly content office hours to coach editors as they worked through their parts of Content Work Plan.
Continued Partnership
NewCity has continued to work closely with OSU on a range of projects since the main website redesign in 2018, including:
- Oklahoma State Extension Service; 2019
- Residential Life & Housing; 2019
- Working with all of the OSU colleges to move into the new design system; 2019-2020
- Oklahoma City campus website; 2022
- Career Services; 2022
- Tulsa campus website; 2022-2023
- Refresh of main website home page; 2023
- OSU Institute of Technology; 2023
- OSU National Center for Wellness and Recovery; 2023
- Undergraduate Admissions site improvements; 2024 (see website case study)
The whole website drives admissions
“With our new website, our admissions site and our homepage are all one website. They’re integrated,” OSU’s branding and digital strategy director said. “There’s no disconnect anymore.”
The admissions conversion funnel tracks goals using Google Analytics and Slate. We prioritized new centralized content along key user paths for the prospective student audience — academic programs, scholarships and financial aid, admissions, about, and student life.
As a result, post-launch “Get Mail” (request for information) conversions went up more than 35%, and “Apply” conversions were also up.
