Launch
crown.edu

The Crown College website on an iPhone, showing the line "We go deeper"
The redesigned Crown College Academics page with an orange header reading "Where academic excellence is a way of life"
Web Design

The Problem

Crown's website was behind the times, inaccurate, and riddled with UI problems that made the website difficult to navigate.

Web Design

Solution

We designed and launched a new 300+ page WordPress with an innovative user experience to meet each end-user.

Visit crown.edu
1

The team spent weeks doing research in an attempt to simplify. Wireframes were created in XD to model the look and feel and test the solutions.

Adobe XD
2

We hired an external development house – SeaDev. I worked with the development team to create custom solutions to bring our vision to life.

Wordpress Developement
3

I led my team to create all the copy and imagery while ensuring quality control on the finalized pages. We then continued updates after launch.

Build + Updates
The Crown College Academics page on a MacBook Pro against a black background
New Website

Main Features

The Crown College navigation menu open on "Cost + Aid", with icons for scholarships, loans and paying for college

Navigation

Intuitive navigation

Based on user personas, the navigation guides each user to the relevant information quickly and simply.

Look + Feel

Tech meets Edu

The updated look and feel reflected the Crown brand update and marries the look and feel of high tech with the outdated space of education.

Two Crown College website cards, "We're not wasting time" with program stats and "Online Viewbook"

In the Details

The WordPress back end for the Crown College site, with the dashboard open

Sophisticated Backend

A complicated system was necessary to make the website feel fluid and straightforward, which connected 7 different sites to appear as a single unified site. This pushed the developers to utilize plugins and develop customized solutions to create an eloquent solution.

A Crown College program page for Communication, with the heading "Why choose Communication studies at Crown?"

Relevant Content

All copy and imagery were written and reviewed by my team to provide updated and relevant content to each user type. This sometimes required pages to be duplicated with slight content changes to speak to every type of user directly. In addition, photos were either taken or found to bring the website to life.

The Nook, Crown College's article page, with a featured story titled "Why Christian Education is Still Valuable"

The Nook

We designed an information hub named The Nook that could serve as an SEO hub. Our SEO strategy centered around writing articles with under-utilized keywords to improve rankings. Further, this site was built with a unique look and feel to serve as a gateway for new users to interact with the Crown brand.

The Crown College Homecoming and Family Weekend page on an iPad Air
The Crown College Communication program page on an iPhone, showing students smiling
The Crown College Cost + Aid page on an iPhone in dark mode
A hand holding an iPhone that shows the Crown College Professional Development page

See the new site

What we found

The Payoff

The result was phenomenal. The website redesign was essential in propelling the brand beyond typical edu standards.

With a simplified UX, prospective students, online students, alumni, and parents were all able to navigate relevant information more quickly – resulting in incredible gains.

80%

increase in web visibility

Over the previous website

96%

lead increase

While reducing cost by 73%