About Our Client

Cheyney University is the nation's oldest historically Black College, established in 1837. Many of their students are first-generation college students, and core to all of the work that Cheyney does is to fulfill this mission of helping families get into more positive circumstances through education.

Key Problem(s)

  • They needed a digital presence to help increase enrollment, particularly amongst its diverse populations. Enrollment had been steadily declining to force the cutting of a few athletic and extracurricular programs.
  • Cheyney’s former website had 600-700 pages and it was difficult for a user to know how to navigate to desired pages. There was no single webmaster which not only caused redundant pages to be created but resulted in inconsistently designed pages.
  • There were very multiple distinct target audiences (e.g., prospective students, alumni) for the site that had entirely separate needs and the existing site did not make it easy for these separate groups how to proceed.

Our Approach

  • In order to boost applications and enrollment, we wanted the site to speak directly to prospective parents and students and convey the literal centuries of the University’s while at the same time ensuring it felt vibrant and modern. To this end, we wanted to incorporate large, bold imagery of the active campus during springtime to showcase the historic beauty with current students the user could empathize with.
  • In order to cut down on the content and make the site easy-to-navigate we knew we would need to communicate with the many stakeholders to see which content was critical and what could be merged or deleted. Throughout the project, we conducted interviews with over 15 different stakeholders and ensured alignment across departments on the site.
  • We did persona profiles to understand each of the different user groups we were speaking to and their goals when visiting our site. In order to provide direct user journeys for each of these groups, we made explicit paths for different user groups could take as a jumping off point immediately when they enter the site.

We have A LOT of success stories...

What's our secret? Every one starting the same way!
Domain

We hosted their domain name internally, which allows for a seamless transition and no interruption of services.

Hosting

We made sure every effort was made to keep our client's website safe and secure. By doing so, we put their website on our Virtual Private Servers (VPS) which allowed for maximum security and the advantages of a dedicated server (as opposed to shared servers), along with multiple layers of privacy protection with unlimited data storage and bandwidth.

Strategy

We learned who our client is and where they were trying to go. Then, we figure out how their website can help get them there. In the process, we learned everything we could about their brand, organization, products, targets, and competition that surround it.

Design

We used the website strategy we created just for our client to create a design that achieved their goals while delighting their visitors/users. Their website was designed to be beautiful, authentic, and strategically organized for a seamless user experience.

Code

We brought our client's website to life. Every website we develop uses the latest and greatest technology and coding practices to ensure a long and fruitful life online. We built an easy-to-update, mobile responsive website that looks and functions perfectly regardless of the browser or device their visitors used.

Maintain

Ongoing Maintenance is the best defense against different software used to build websites and search engine algorithms constantly changing and adapting. We had a trained Software Engineer on hand to monitor the website which was necessary to make updates to continue optimal performance and proactively seek opportunities to improve the site.

SEO

SEO is central to our client's website’s visibility. It is an important way of communicating with Google and other search engines to prove the relevance of their site for users and their search queries. We conducted an Audit to get a better understanding on what needs improved.

Our University selected Creatotech to update our rather old website. Creatotech brought our website into the modern age that now allows us to simply keep content up-to-date and looking high-end. Their process to develop the new site was clearly defined and greatly assisted our team who had not gone through a project like this before.

Ken B.

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