Pre-College Programs is an educational division of the University of Maryland. Its Upward Bound program receives federal and state funding to provide fundamental support to high school students in their preparation for college entrance. Upward Bound serves high school students from low-income families and high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor's degree.
Pre-College Programs’ Upward Bound program has an amazing track record with 96% of its students attending colleges and many receiving prestigious awards, such as Gates Millennium and Posse scholarships but due to its state of funding, upward bound program is limited to only certain schools and thus every year they had to turn down several students who needed academic support but did not fit the eligibility criteria.
This is why they started a new program, LIFT, that provides affordable SAT Prep Classes to students outside the eligibility of Upward Bound program.
Pre-College Programs’ website consisted of 14 web pages with only a web page dedicated to LIFT program. The website being the primary source for information and student enrollment, I implemented Google Analytics to understand the user behaviour around it.
The findings after the 2 week data collection process were:
1. 95% of the traffic to the LIFT Program web page was coming directly from google searches like SAT Prep: This indicated that the traffic was not driven by the popularity of the Upward Bound program but from an organic interest in finding SAT Prep classes.
2. 85% of the users were leaving the website without browsing any further: This indicated that the content was not compelling enough to deliver an amazing first impression.
3. Average time on page was 40 seconds: The user was only concerned with SAT Prep yet the website had 13 other links not fitting this goal. Just one click and the user was gone forever!
All these findings led to one major insight:
Understanding the picture
Branding
A brand is not what you say it is but what a customer says it is.
Building a website without a branding strategy would have been inefficient as it would have failed to create a lasting impression on the end user. Good branding makes a user yearn for more and speak about your brand to others.
Before onboarding the user with the brand, it was important that all the stakeholders have a consensus in the direction of the brand and that is why I invited every staff member to participate in the Brand Attributes Workshop.
And LIFT Program becomes Lift Academy
Academy indicates a place of study or institution which correctly signifies what Lift Academy does.
Web Design: Designing for the instagram generation
Selling more than just a class, the website focuses on selling an experience by showcasing photos of students in the beautiful University of Maryland. Further, the content leverages the University of Maryland brand.
Results
Within a month of the website launch, we saw a jump into the website traffic with following key results:
1. Bounce rate reduced from 85% to 55%.
2. Average duration on page increased from 40 seconds to 3 min 27 seconds.
3. Average 50% MoM increase in student enrollment.
Btw I also coded the entire responsive website using HTML, CSS and JS which was a lot of fun.
Culture
How would your community describe you?
Helpful
Resourceful
Caring
Supportive
Warm/ friendly
Competent
Encouraging
Passionate
Inclusive
Diverse
Customer
How would you Describe your customer?
Ambitious
Dedicated/ Focused
Energetic
Self-Motivated
Diverse
High achievers
Self-reflective
Self-initiaters
High self esteem
Seekers
Voice
How do you sound to others?
Caring
Competent
Encouraging/ Motivating/ Hopeful
Transparent/ Honest
Feeling
How others feel after interacting with you?
Hopeful/ Motivated
Confident/ Improved self-esteem
Accomplished
Assured/ Readiness
Tactical
Supported
Resourceful
Impact
What tangible impact do you have on others?
Tactical
Resourceful
College ready
More successful
Relationships
Focused/ clarity
X-factor
What makes you special?
Relationships
University of Maryland
Residential program
Quest foreward
Brand Attributes Workshop
Upward Bound’s Target User ≠ LIFT Program’s Target User
LIFT Program web page as of October 2018
Brand Attributes Workshop
Lift Academy Logo
Stylescape to communicate the brand direction to the stakeholders
Lift Academy’s Home Page (Desktop, Tablet and Mobile respectively)
Lift Academy’s SAT Page (Desktop, Tablet and Mobile respectively)
After this, it was evident that LIFT Program needed a separate website with no unnecessary links for users to get lost. Further, the program needed a new brand that can better connect with its target users.
After the two hour workshop, we came to a consensus that the LIFT Program should communicate the following feelings:
Competency, Diversity and Assurity
Further, we decided to piggyback on the strong brand of University of Maryland and leverage it to distinguish LIFT program from its well known competition like Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc.
Pre-college Programs,
University of Maryland
Client
Role
Branding & Marketing Strategy
Web Design
Web Development
Team
Solo project
Time
2 months
Jashan Gupta
All Projects
While Pre-College Programs never faced any trouble in enrolling students for it’s popular Upward Bound program, LIFT program was relatively unknown and struggled with student enrollment to a point that it hardly made any money.
When I was hired in October 2018 as a Graduate Assistant, I was given a simple goal:
Increase the enrollment of students into LIFT Program’s SAT Prep Classes.
Goal
Lift
Academy
