The Client
Located in Conway, Arkansas, the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) is the state’s second largest public university.
The Situation
University recruitment has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. Long gone are the days of direct mail marketing and traveling to area high schools to talk with juniors and seniors. Today, tech-savvy teens often decide what college they’ll attend long before setting foot on its campus. And helping them make one of the most important decisions of their lives are University Web sites. Not surprisingly, schools with highly attractive, interactive, user-friendly, information-rich Web sites consistently capture the attention—and ultimately the tuition dollars—of future students.
The Challenge
This simple realization was the driving force behind UCA’s decision to redesign its Web site, www.uca.edu, which was originally built around 2000. Results of a student opinion survey revealed that most students found the Web site “boring,” “hard to navigate,” and lacking the information they wanted. That was not the impression UCA officials wanted to make on potential students. So UCA issued an RFP and hired Softwyre to redesign its antiquated Web site.