In collaboration with the talented team at Mackey Strategies, Muhlenberg College, a private four-year liberal arts school founded in 1848 and located in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, engaged us to conduct a discovery process oriented toward improving their online presence. While Muhlenberg has a well-earned reputation for its rigor and commitment to excellence, they saw the need to more powerfully articulate what distinguishes the College from a myriad of competition. They engaged the Mackey team to develop a strategic messaging framework that showcased the College’s unique value proposition for prospective students to inform all communications and marketing. Together, Mackey Strategies and ERI developed and prioritized strategic, creative, and technical recommendations to develop a new web presence to bring the new messaging framework to life and provide a compelling and exciting experience for prospective students.
ERI conducted its signature RDS (Research. Discovery. Strategy)™ Method that consisted of assessing each of Muhlenberg’s external communication channels, conducting a peer evaluation, engaging key stakeholders in conversation, and auditing their most frequently visited web pages. After working with College leadership to prioritize recommendations, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work on proposing and implementing improvements to content strategy, UX, and UI.
The result was a new and improved “digital doorstep”—the College’s primary website— that answers the question: ‘Why Muhlenberg?’ The new site was designed to be more visually compelling and to more clearly convey the Muhlenberg experience through the lens of students and faculty. By strategically integrating video, stories from within the community, and multiple pathways to the most commonly-sought information, the new muhlenberg.edu better exemplifies the Muhlenberg experience.
Envisioning and Executing a New Hero. A key takeaway from our discovery was that the Muhlenberg homepage needed to be visually driven and action-oriented. We delivered a new, dynamic homepage that focused on illuminating key differentiators and value proposition.
Driving Measurable Engagement: Through interactive and flexible components, we created more touchpoints for the end-user to learn more and take key next steps. We elevated these calls-to-action to make it easier for prospective students to navigate and advance their search process.
Bringing a New Messaging Framework to Life: Mackey Strategies delivered a new messaging platform that reflected a more authentic, differentiated, and compelling articulation of what makes Muhlenberg a place of true distinction. We worked together to incorporate Muhlenberg’s new positioning throughout key areas of the new site.
Integrating and Amplifying the Student Voice: Throughout our strategic discovery audit, we explored the possibility of inspiring action through the emotive power of visual storytelling. We prominently integrated powerful testimonials and videos to let the student experience speak for itself, authentically and naturally.
Delivering an Intuitive Search Experience: We re-envisioned one of the most critical and most frequently visited areas of Muhlenberg.edu: academic programs. We built a new program finder that offers a seamless experience for students to find their academic program of interest by way of career aspirations and professional interests.
