Putting a fresh face on student recruitment
How can we create a modern, accessible website to improve the user experience and drive university applications?
The client
Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) has been educating students in the historic heart of Lincoln for over 150 years.
We have been working with them since 2019, when we rebuilt their WordPress website in Craft CMS, and during the Covid-19 pandemic we built a Digital Open Days system so they could continue to host open day events online.
The opportunity
Student recruitment suffered across all universities during the pandemic as many students chose to defer their degrees, international student numbers plummeted, and the cancellation of A Levels resulted in a record number of students getting into their first-choice universities and leaving others with a smaller intake than expected.
As things gradually returned to the new normal, it was of vital importance that the BGU website could drive student recruitment numbers back to pre-pandemic levels. It was decided that the website needed freshening up and BGU consulted with an external agency to produce a new brand identity.
The updated branding had already been applied to the university prospectus, and we were tasked with taking this new identity and rolling it out across the website to ensure consistency across digital and print media. This would include new colours, typography and design elements, with a strong focus on accessibility and optimising the user experience.
We've had the pleasure of working with Ben Rook and the team at BGU since the start of 2020 when we re-platformed their website from WordPress to Craft CMS.
We collaborated closely through lockdown, exploring ways to use digital services in place of open days and careers events. More recently we've been hands on with a successful move of domain, as well as improvements to engagement, course information, website performance and accessibility - including this latest update.
Daniel Westlake
Developer & CEO, CursorThe solution
- Create a design library that can be used as reference for future design work.
- Implement new colours and typography across the site.
- Adapt all existing components to work with the new house style.
- Redesign all banners to include new design elements.
- Ensure that sub-sites are also updated while retaining their separate identities.
- Optimise the user journey by improving calls to action to draw the focus to key parts of the page.
Very much appreciate all the great work the Cursor team have put in over the past few years, and especially with this redesign. Looks amazing!
Ben Rook
Marketing Manager, Bishop Grosseteste University
The outcome
We produced new designs for key pages, such as the homepage and course pages, and consulted closely with BGU to ensure they were happy with the direction we were taking. Accessibility was a key topic in these meetings and we carefully ensured that all colour contrasts were compliant with WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards.
We improved banners across the website, adding in a new feature to alter the height of the image and also specify a separate mobile banner. Behind the scenes, we tidied up the content management system and made it easier for BGU to amend pages and change colours.
These key pages were implemented first, setting the style that all other pages would follow. We underwent a stringent testing process to ensure that all style changes had been properly implemented across the BGU website, and thoroughly prepared for the launch, resulting in a smooth transition from the old website to the new.
