Olympic College is recognized as one of the top community colleges in the United States. The institution has one of the largest military-connected student bodies in Washington state, serving more than 8,500 military and civilian students yearly.
Northern collaborated with Olympic College to redesign and rebuild the institution’s website on Drupal 9.
One of the primary objectives for the new site was to create a better user experience built around student needs, following the Guided Pathways approach.
The Guided Pathways model is rooted in the philosophy of connecting student experiences with successful career outcomes. It provides a roadmap for higher education institutions to synchronize every aspect of the student journey — from program structure to website User Interface (UI) — with clear pathways for achieving their goals.
The approach has gained popularity in higher education for institutions that wish to better serve student needs to improve completion rates, equity, and enrollment.
Additionally, the college wanted to empower site administrators with straightforward content management options and templates consistent with the brand.
For the site’s design, Olympic College wanted a sleeker, more modern look that improved navigation, readability, and accessibility.
The Olympic College website encompasses many prospective students’ first interaction with the institution. However, with an unclear structure and content tailored primarily to internal audiences, the previous version of the site had high bounce rates and low user engagement.
The school has two specific student groups: civilian and military. User surveys highlighted opportunities for enhancing program information and navigation tailored to these distinct demographics.
Furthermore, the site's search capabilities were limited, did not fully meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, and didn’t have a consistent design.
From an administrative perspective, content editing posed challenges as page ownership was limited to individuals, contributing to inconsistencies in the user experience.
Working with the Olympic College team, Northern planned and executed robust user research with input from both staff and students.
Overall, the consensus was to create a more student-centric site aligned with the Guided Pathways principles to provide a clear roadmap for student success.
The actionable requirements for the site redesign were to:
Once the discovery was complete, Northern started rebuilding the site in Drupal 9 based on user insights and the specifications provided by the Olympic College team.
Without expressly using the “Guided Pathways” terminology, the user groups all agreed on the importance of creating a clearer roadmap to student success, with checkpoints and confirmations throughout the process to boost students' confidence in their progress.
With this goal in mind, Northern designed a streamlined primary navigation for the new site, ensuring that it included clearly defined information tailored to the needs of civilian and military students. A secondary navigation was created to ensure that internal users could easily access staff directories without interfering with the student experience.
Funnelback, the cloud-based software that conducts searches using machine learning algorithms, was implemented to power better on-site search.
The site’s visual style was updated to engage and excite students while giving them a sense of what it’s like to attend Olympic College. The new design is accessible, responsible, and easy to navigate, with clear calls to action. It also showcases the diversity of the college population and the beauty of its surroundings.
To simplify the content creation and editing process, Northern introduced structured templates for the school’s internal users. The team also created a single source of truth for page information to ensure content consistency, streamlining site updates and improving the student content experience. Olympic College’s core teams now have the flexibility to update key imagery, adjust styling options and control permissions as necessary.
Olympic College now has a higher education website that provides students with quick and easy access to information about their course roadmaps, applications, important dates, and more.
The new site experience has supported an enrollment increase of nine percent in just one year.
In collaboration with the Olympic College team, Northern:
Northern's collaboration with Olympic College led to more than just migration to Drupal 9 — it brought about a redesigned user experience that increased enrollment by nine percent.
By taking the time to thoroughly understand students’ main motivations, obstacles, and objectives, the Northern team developed several customized solutions to assist students in navigating the application process.
The updated website provides core teams with a balanced approach of flexibility and consistency, simplifying content creation. At the same time, students and faculty enjoy easier navigation and better search options, leading to significantly improved user experiences.
If you’d like to learn more about implementing the Guided Pathways model on your website, contact our experts using the button below to get started.
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