Need to Know
- It was important for Canisius University to create a platform that stood out amongst its competitors with unparalleled user experience for its primary audience, prospective students.
- Our work has included Drupal digital experience, content strategy, User Experience (UX) research, brand insights, digital marketing management, search engine optimization, and emerging technologies in personalization and search.
- Northern tied site analytics, SEO performance and paid media reporting all together through custom Data Studio reports.
Client
Canisius University is a top-tier private University in Buffalo, New York, providing students with a hands-on, mentorship-driven, transformative experience engaging in the classroom and beyond.
Brief
Northern has partnered with Canisius for over six years to build a world-class digital experience platform that is fine-tuned to students needs and expectations. This work has evolved from website development into deep content strategy, student journey refinement, a large rebrand, and a full-funnel performance marketing suite of services.
Challenge
With an imperative to stand out amongst its competitors, Canisius University needed a new digital platform to enhance student experiences, promote brand messaging, ease content creation, inspire deeper technology integrations, and invite new students to learn at Canisius.
The University was looking for more than a web implementation agency. They needed a partner that understood the higher education landscape, and that could provide an evidence-based approach to strategic investments that moved the entire University forward.
Strategy
Drupal provided the scalable and flexible foundation for the Canisius team to streamline content and marketing operations upon - and focus their time on enriching the experience of students, rather than working with older, inflexible technology.
Northern's continuous UX research uncovered the primary needs of Canisius University's target audience, which helped the UI team deliver more intuitive navigation and pathways to important content. The improved information architecture is evident in a more streamlined home page and access to the program catalog.
The Canisius team knew that nothing matters more on a site than the content itself - but where to start? Northern’s content strategy team worked with Canisius to identify the areas of the site that were in need of a content refresh using a coordinated Google Analytics review as well as ongoing UX engagement with perspectives, current students, faculty and staff.
Content enrichment also provided an excellent opportunity for Canisius University to audit its SEO status. Northern ensured a seamless migration experience while improving the site’s SEO and strengthened its Google Tag Manager and Analytics 4 set up for a more sophisticated tracking portfolio. These new integrations allow Canisius University to report trends more accurately, giving them the confidence to make future marketing decisions.
Canisius also recognized that it could not sit still on technology following the launch of the new digital engagement platform. Northern took the lead in recommending and implementing key features to extend the reach of University communications, enrollment and marketing teams. Workflow automation, integrations into Canisius administration systems, and new personalization tools have been created to empower teams to do more.
In 2023, Canisius entered into a University-wide re-brand with a big vision. Our deep research into student needs and pain points made us an ideal partner to assist, which blossomed into a series of focus-groups, survey engagement, a new logo design and brand messaging, and post-brand-launch validation and sentiment analysis.
Finally, after demonstrating a deep understanding of the University, higher education in the area, and the strategic priorities of the University, Northern extended its partnership with Canisius by lending its digital marketing and paid media management expertise to the University. Northern has deployed a full-funnel marketing strategy for Canisius, where our efforts are yielding tangible results along the full student success marketing funnel.
Results
The digital experience platform now focuses on the authentic primary audience (prospective students), has intuitive navigation, and gives students quick and easy access to essential information. Our partnership now includes full paid media management, ongoing technology updates, new feature development and road map consultation services.
- Search- and SEO-empowered website;
- Modern permissions and workflow architecture;
- New marketing, lead generation, and analytics capabilities;
- A streamlined approach to the application process;
- Updated and structured template design and Layout Builder capabilities;
- Dynamic messaging and commenting for the website content generation;
- Increased performance and decreased page load time
- ADA and WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliant site built with a device-agnostic, responsive design;
- A vibrant design captures the Canisius experience essence and differentiates them from competing institutions.
- Integration with external Program Catalog
- Component-based layout using Paragraphs
- Configuration pages for customization of home page content