Best of CASE District IV Award
 

Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Title of entry: What Starts Here Campaign Microsite

About this entry: The What Starts Here microsite is the primary online presence for UT’s 10-year, $6 billion comprehensive fundraising campaign. We carefully developed our content and UX to meet a variety of goals, including giving CTAs, volunteer stewardship and even the production of standardized campaign cases across 24 fundraising units.

What Starts Here is one of our “Goldilocks” projects that felt like we got it just right — there’s a lot of content but not too many long blocks of text, razzle-dazzle from videos, animation and photography but not in a way that slows load times. An interested visitor can click deep into the university case for support, but someone who just wants the basics can check out a conversational FAQ.

We used the site as a centerpiece of an omnichannel campaign the week of our public launch, and it continues to get regular traffic through placements and referrals across UT’s digital ecosystem. The microsite met or exceeded all of our project KPIs, driving a 242% increase in sessions, a 196% increase in pageviews and 100% on-time participation from 24 fundraising units. Nearly 70% of microsite visitors have never visited UT’s giving site before.