The University of Louisville (UofL) is on a mission to not only grow its student body, but to modernize the ways they support and connect with students by focusing on their digital experience. With a new president at the helm and strategic goals for centralization, UofL knew they needed to overhaul their vast and fragmented web infrastructure. Their digital landscape, spanning hundreds of disconnected sites, was not serving the needs of students or the university itself. This was a collaboration born right on time, and we couldn’t wait to start our work together. The challenge was clear: consolidate, streamline, and create a more user-friendly digital experience that reflects UofL’s strategic goals.
Our partnership with the University of Louisville began with a comprehensive analysis of their existing web environment, which led to a strategic roadmap for improving the user experience (UX) and information architecture (IA). It set the tone for the first phase of our work together—focused on research, foundational improvements, and delivering tangible results that will transform their online presence for years to come.
Understanding UofL’s Challenges
UofL faces many of the same pressures that other universities do, but their challenges ran deeper. Their web presence was highly decentralized, with over 375 separate websites operating without cohesive governance or content strategy. There was no central authority to ensure consistency, and students were left navigating a maze of disconnected sites and information.
Compounding these challenges was the university’s need to improve recruitment and retention, especially as the city of Louisville faced its own political and social challenges. For UofL, the website isn’t just a digital tool—it’s a critical touchpoint for prospective and current students, parents, and the wider community. It’s also a public relations asset, and improving the digital experience was essential for improving perception and trust.
Foundations for Success
We started with a landscape analysis to map out UofL’s entire web infrastructure. That was a critical first step in understanding how students, parents, and staff were interacting with the current system. Through extensive on-site and virtual research, we developed a comprehensive understanding of the student journey and the university’s operational challenges. The analysis allowed us to identify major areas for improvement and guided our approach to streamlining content and site navigation.
One of the most significant outcomes from this phase was our work centralizing UofL’s web governance. We collaborated closely with UofL’s internal teams, from the Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM) to Information Technology Services (ITS), to build a framework for content governance that would ensure the new, streamlined structure had staying power.
Service Blueprint: A Roadmap for the Future
The results of our early landscape analysis and extensive research informed our Service Blueprint, a document that outlines strategic recommendations to optimize how students navigate and experience UofL online. The Service Blueprint includes key insights into student services, recruitment, and retention, providing a guide for UofL to follow as they implement changes. The blueprint also helped address their siloed nature of operations, offering solutions to break down barriers and improve the student journey from first contact through enrollment. We outlined specific recommendations, like optimizing admissions information based on student type, creating an events hub, and improving governance practices to ensure consistency across the university’s web presence.
Homepage Overhaul and Key Destination Pages
One of the first triumphs of this phase was the redesign of UofL’s homepage. The interim homepage (below) was built on UofL’s existing Content Management System (CMS), reimagined with a focus on recruitment, showcasing the university’s strengths and streamlining the student journey. By August of 2024, we launched their homepage on a new CMS, Drupal, along with select destination pages (including pages for tuition and financial aid) to provide clarity and improve accessibility for prospective students and their families.
These updates were more than cosmetic—our goal was to build a robust, user-centered design system that would influence the structure of the remaining college and departmental sites. UofL’s new homepage and key destination pages were the first major milestones in this process, providing a template for future work while delivering immediate value to the university.
Analytics
As with any website we create, we also want to create a method for measuring results. We worked with UofL’s team to move their analytics over to Google Analytics 4, coming up with a plan and framework for analytics tracking on their new site while consulting with their team to implement a new way forward for measurement and tracking.
A Collaborative Approach
Throughout the project, collaboration was key. We worked closely with UofL’s teams to ensure our recommendations aligned with their goals and addressed their unique challenges. The use of multiple communications channels and shared documents allowed us the flexibility to manage the many and varied parts of the project. Strategically planned and focused visits to the university for research and training allowed us to directly learn from and share with the broader stakeholder community at the university. UofL’s internal teams were eager to see progress, and that collaborative approach helped build trust and set the stage for future phases of work.
As Mighty Citizen finished our work with the University of Louisville, we detailed a path for the university to consolidate over 375 websites into fewer than 100—streamlining content, improving the user experience, and scaling for future success.
Mighty Citizen for Higher Education
At Mighty Citizen, we specialize in helping universities like the University of Louisville overcome the unique challenges of the higher education landscape. If your institution is ready for a digital transformation that puts students first, reach out to us. We’d love to partner with you to create a user-centered web experience that drives recruitment, retention, and success.