South College
South College is a private for-profit university based in Knoxville, Tennessee, offering over 100 programs and concentrations ranging from certificate to doctoral levels. Established in 1882, South College is dedicated to providing students with a hands-on, relevant education that significantly impacts their lives. The institution offers a variety of learning options, including accelerated, hybrid, transfer, and distance learning programs. With small class sizes, state-of-the-art labs, and conveniently located campuses, students benefit from an engaging and practical educational experience led by experienced faculty who bring real-world examples and foster thought-provoking discussions.
South.edu
The primary goal of the South College website project was to increase enrollment and stability by improving site navigation, developing a mobile-first and responsive design, and implementing an intelligent layout for easier information access and tracking. WebDevStudios aimed to enhance user experience, optimize content by eliminating duplicates, and restructure the layout for better visual appeal and navigability. A major highlight of this project was integrating the standalone college tour experience into a dynamic section within the main domain (South.edu). Overall, the South College project focused on creating a user-friendly, visually appealing, and easily navigable website to support South College’s goals of increasing enrollment and improving user experience.
South College Customized Tour Experience
The crown jewel of this website project is South College’s dynamic online tour experience, which our team accomplished by developing a customized, one-of-a-kind plugin. The South College tour experience is a storytelling journey that takes the user from a peek at the college campus to the South College story and history, to South College’s schools and programs, including the institution’s course catalog. Next, potential students are taken to an introduction to student life, such as a look at the online student dashboard, financial aid, and tuition.
Before, information was not readily available and easy to find. Now, parents and students have easy access to everything they need to know about South College’s educational offerings interactively, all on one page. Additionally, the customization of the tour experience remains flexible for South College’s internal content team. New pages can be added as necessary or moved to different sections.
“For me, it’s all about speed. Everyone wants that site to load quickly, load fast, and get to all the information.”
~ Kathleen Stockham, CMO of South College
Academic Catalog Management System Integration
As part of the South College customized tour experience, WebDevStudios integrated Acalog ACMS, an academic catalog management system. This system serves as a centralized and searchable hub for an institution’s academic catalogs. With the integration of Acalog, students can research available courses, course locations, costs associated with those courses, and other applicable information.
Improved Search
For South College, site search was incredibly important. The previous site’s site search provided an inadequate experience. For example, a search for the word ‘tuition’ resulted in nothing. Using the WordPress native search, our development team deployed a parametric element to South College’s website search. Now, a search for tuition will display various results, such as all applicable programs and their different tuition schedules.
Website Information Architecture and Data Migration
The South College website was initially built with WordPress using a page builder plugin, which became cumbersome. They wanted to switch to the modern WordPress blocks (Gutenberg) and reorganize their content for a better user experience.
We began by identifying their user personas to understand their target market, followed by creating a comprehensive user flow and journey matrix to ensure each persona could quickly find the information they needed.
Despite being a WordPress-to-WordPress migration, the data transfer was substantial. We migrated the site to a new WordPress installation, converting and optimizing data for the WordPress Blocks Editor. This allowed their editorial team to manage content efficiently. WebDevStudios also wrote a custom script to map the remaining data into standard Gutenberg blocks.
South College Website Redesign
Before coming to WebDevStudios, South College worked with a creative designer, changed its brand colors, and updated the overall look and feel. The new branding was strong, and it was essential it be reflected on the new website. However, the South College website redesign was more than a redesign; it was more of a reimagining.
After a competitor analysis, South College and the WebDevStudios design team concluded that the site needed to be updated with the new branding and modernized. The goal was not to meet the level of South College’s competitors but to exceed it. The newly redesigned website has become more attractive to visitors, inspiring longer sessions and greater engagement.
Additionally, the overall structure of the new site was improved greatly compared to their previous site, allowing editors to better understand the WordPress editing experience. The process for entering new content was streamlined. Using the modern WordPress editor has made a big difference and cleaned things up, and the South College internal team is finding it easier to update content as needed.
“When I started, the site had been live close to six years. It really had not been updated. So it was in bad need of a facelift. It was in bad need of a more modernized and updated look and feel.”
~ Kathleen Stockham, CMO of South College
Behind the Scenes: The South College Website Transformation
Looking for more insight on the website strategy and redesign we created exclusively for South College? Watch this interview with South College CMO Kathleen Stockham.