As pioneers in higher education website development for over 20 years now, we understand that a successful website is more than just an online presence—it’s a critical tool for achieving your institution’s marketing goals. Whether you're looking to improve student recruitment, book more campus tours, optimize the user experience for your current students and faculty, or all of the above and more, a well-executed digital strategy can make all the difference.
Our strategy services are integral to larger website redesign projects and are always our starting point before we start any design or development work. Beacon believes it is crucially important to build a foundational understanding of your school's brand and mission before we begin delivering HTML, content, or other project tasks. Our objective is to successfully blend your unique institutional goals with our deep understanding of web development best practices and higher education trends. Because our strategy phase is collaborative and results-focused, we can ensure your website aligns with objectives for both your internal and external audiences. Here are some of the ways in which we gain that deep analysis and what insights you can expect:
We start by learning everything about your institution—your mission, your audiences, your stakeholders, and your institution's unique value propositions. Our first phase includes a detailed stakeholder planning session, focus groups, audience surveys, heatmap analysis, and more to ensure that every decision is based on data and insight. This research allows us to define clear objectives and target the right audiences, setting the stage for a strategic website redesign or development project.
Before we create responsive designs that tell the story of your school, our designers need to get to know you and analyze your current environment. After starting with general higher education market research in your region, we look into your competitors and aspirational peers with a creative marketing analysis. We will compare and contrast against your website to identify areas in which you are succeeding or perhaps could improve. From there, a user experience strategy will take shape, directly driving the creation of your website designs.
Content is king, especially when it comes to higher education websites. An issue we often hear is that content owners in higher education just don't know where to start! In our process, we start at the beginning by crawling and cataloging every single page of HTML content on your website so we have a complete site inventory. Our content strategists will delve deep into your top performing or most important pages to provide a content audit with specific action items and suggestions, complete with SEO insights. This work prepares Beacon to assist you in developing a content strategy that serves your target audiences and aligns with your institution’s goals.
Part of a winning strategy is thinking ahead a few steps in the process to anticipate any potential roadblocks. During our functional and technical analysis, our team reviews your current server and hosting environment, learns about any critical databases you're utilizing, notes all 3rd party integrations, and generally analyzes your website at its most technical roots. We will learn your requirements and establish access to your CMS at this point if needed to ensure we have all the information required for seamless development—without any roadblocks.
One of the larger tasks undertaken during our strategy phase is the development of your site hierarchy, or information architecture. Ease of navigation is a major concern we hear incredibly frequently during higher education redesign projects. After all, it matters little how eye-catching your design is or how compelling your content if your users can't find what they're looking for. Because we take time on your site hierarchy and encourage collaboration with several rounds of review, future migration efforts will be simplified. After we deliver a reorganized site structure with suggestions for pages to move, delete, or merge, your team or the Beacon content writers will be prepared to development new content and get ready for content migration.
If your project requires a more comprehensive discovery into your audience behaviors, Beacon offers personalization solutions to even more ensure your prospective student audiences find the content that you most want them to discover. By developing specific audience personas and performing even more detailed research into the typical actions and preferences of your audiences, Beacon will build a personalization plan that helps you drive website traffic to the areas critical to your campaign strategies and desired website outcomes.
While many of our strategy work happens "behind-the-scenes," the results are prominently seen in every website Beacon creates. Over the years, many clients have stuck with us due to our comprehensive understanding of their brand, their goals, and their website marketing ecosystem. Browse our portfolio and see how we've helped countless institutions bring their website strategies to life.
Make the most out of your strategic website efforts by employing an all-in-one solution. We can deliver a redesigned website suited to your particular needs in addition to paid advertising campaigns, website hosting, ongoing support and maintenance, post-launch strategy analysis, and more—all for one price, with one team! And did we mention that we include integration and development of Cascade CMS (a content management system built and optimized specifically for higher education)? Beacon's LuxEd is one of a kind and the true best solution for schools seeking to crush the competition in their digital space, while saving precious time and budget.
