UMass Amherst, a leading public research university with more than 28,000 students, had just undergone a major rebranding to boost growth and competition on a global scale. But the main gateway website didn't align with the new "Be Revolutionary" brand and nor was it up to the task of helping UMass meet   its ambitious goals. The site needed to be brought up to date.

We built UMass Amherst a robust new gateway site that reflects the university’s commitment to innovation. Based on a library of modular components, our design is flexible while maintaining a consistent brand. It’s also connected to newly designed news, events and enrollment websites under one sitemap, ensuring that sites across the university form one unified, effective ecosystem. 

Information technologies play a key role in the university’s strategic objectives, including aggressive growth targets for online courses. Our design also includes data analytics and measurement capabilities to help UMASS learn about the audience visiting the site and optimize the online application experience. For instance, a dashboard extrapolates granular details to distinguish between visitors initiating an application from those looking for financial assistance. This allows the admissions team to be highly strategic when planning marketing events, conducting outreach and making future decisions about how to optimize the site. 

UMass’s modular component library was built for the future. It’s now available to other university departments and program sites to develop their own site content independently and cost efficiently.  It can be adapted to changing content strategies simply by adding new modular components. The site visit measurement strategy can also be implemented across new campus departments, arming the university with consistent analytics to measure website performance at an increasingly targeted level.

The new site design provides UMass Amherst with a brand-aligned digital ecosystem and actionable analytics tool that can be repurposed across dozens of sites across the university. Using our site visit measurement strategy will allow enrollment officials to follow students along their path, from inquiry to application, financial aid and beyond.