Best of CASE District V Award
 

Institution: Kent State University

Title of entry: Kent State’s New FBEC Website Garners 85%+ Engagement Rates

About this entry: Although Kent State had a unit called One Stop for Student Services, its name implied a broader service scope than we offered. While One Stop focused on financial aid, billing, and enrollment support, it wasn’t empowered to handle housing, dining, parking, or academic services. In 2017, One Stop’s hub website was created to route students and parents to appropriate web pages within One Stop or the supporting home office websites for Financial Aid, Registrar, or Bursar’s. Over time, duplicate content was created in an attempt to help users find information, leading to a bloated, unhelpful experience.

Our goal was creation of an easy-to-navigate, streamlined experience for students and parents seeking financial, billing, and enrollment information. Armed with user research findings, we launched the newly named Financial, Billing, and Enrollment Center (FBEC), with a unified website and helpful content. This allowed us to dismantle three home office websites, leading to a 41% reduction in content (a cut of 500+ pages), much of which was redundant and out of sync. We also centralized forms access and important dates.

In the first six months after launch, analytics showed solid web visitor engagement rates including:
• Sitewide: 85%, compared to the university’s overall website engagement rate of 62%
• Forms page: 88%
• Contact us page: 91%
• Billing & payments (previous bursar): 94%
• Registration & records (previous registrar): 92%
• Scholarships & financial aid (previous financial aid): 94%
• Top performing important date views
-- Your time to register
-- Withdraw dates
-- Final exams
-- Payment due dates