Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Title of entry: Marketing (Websites/Institutional)

About this entry: In September 2021, UCLA launched a redesign of its main gateway website (UCLA.edu) after nearly a decade in order to update the site’s look and feel and address cutting-edge or updated security and compliance requirements. With a redesign of UCLA.edu, we have the opportunity to tell UCLA’s story, elevate our accomplishments and create an online content destination for both our internal and external audiences. There is a tremendous opportunity for growth as we will be able to better leverage our strong social media footprint to drive traffic to UCLA.edu, and pull fresh, timely content from UCLA Newsroom to the site.

The site is the “digital front door” to the university, used primarily by prospective students and their families. It provides the latest information, news and research findings to showcase the depth of UCLA’s offerings. To create the best user journey, we conducted a thorough analysis to understand audience behavior, traffic patterns and general desires. We built a rich site that encourages users to stick around and return with fresh daily and weekly content.

Our annual goals for the site are ambitious, including attracting more users and increasing time spent on the site. We have already seen excellent outcomes in the five months since we launched, including nearly 25% year-over-year (YOY) increase in unique users, nearly 4 million pageviews and nearly 30% YOY increase in average time spent on page, all from organic traffic.