UX & Content Strategy

Leveraging our team’s deep editorial experience, we began this transformation with the first impression — the homepage — where we immediately and clearly defined where different internal and external audience types (e.g., faculty/staff, students, media members) should start their user journey, and then structured the content to speak directly to them.

To refine the existing extensive list of content category types, we identified several key vocabularies:

• Established primary story categories that align with existing university nomenclature (e.g., Arts & Humanities, Business & Entrepreneurship, Campus & Community, etc.) 
• Limited secondary story categories that allow for wider context
• Very narrow categories created specifically for subject matter experts, which need to be findable but not filterable

Tagging and categorizing content using the newly refined labels helps users quickly find content relevant to their interest or role, while also helping content managers direct users to additional related content of interest.

Rethinking the site’s internal search, we created both general keyword and filtered search options to support users who want to go directly to specific content, especially older published pieces that were harder to find on the legacy site. 

In addition to improving the pure functionality of on-site search, we restructured taxonomies to help with relevancy, findability, and SEO efforts — helping users quickly surface the primary and related content they seek so they depend less on search to begin with.

Pushing this concept one step further, we knew that the SU team really wanted to rethink how they were serving their media audience. Previously, media members had to search the legacy site for specific subject matter experts as sources for their news stories, which posed both maintenance and experience challenges, especially if bios or contact information were outdated. The new Tip Sheets page we created is oriented around news categories that can be searched alphabetically or by keyword, with additional curated context provided by the SU team.

Visual Design

Leveraging a clean, sophisticated, component-based design system, we provided more ways to configure pages based on the team’s content needs, instead of their CMS constraints. With designs that apply consistently across components, they now have the flexibility to create custom-looking new pages that adhere to the established visual language.

With the help of dynamic imagery, clear typography, and distinct date stamps, new and returning users can easily scan and determine what stories are about, when they were posted, and whether they want to click through.

The site also now supports image previews, photo galleries, videos, and varied story types (not just plain text). Using components like “Featured Stories” and “Featured Media” sections, the team can leverage large-scale images and clear headlines to draw attention to key content and improve engagement by breaking up walls of text.

In addition to more photo- and video-focused story types, graphic treatments and subtle animation effects provide visual interest even when additional media is unavailable.

Once finalized, we applied the news site design approach to the template for the site’s companion digital newsletter, SU Today, which is delivered to subscribers twice weekly. Not only does it reflect the new visual aesthetic of the main site, but it also allows the content team to highlight breaking news, incorporate multimedia content, accommodate different image sizes, and more.

Content Management

Reviewing roles, permissions, and workflows on the site, we ensured that the right people now have the right level of access — giving campus communicators more control and flexibility in publishing multimedia-rich content while also helping them understand their role in maintaining SEO and accessibility best practices.

Because other websites within the SU ecosystem both provide and receive information from the SU News team, we alleviated the friction plaguing the client’s legacy RSS feeds to allow site managers to “pull” content as needed, incorporate new image and category types, and leverage controls that help minimize duplicate content.

Going forward, site managers can make more informed decisions based on stronger audience insights and a better understanding of user behavior, thanks to a custom Google Analytics dashboard that we created based on their unique needs, goals, and objectives.