The Client
Doane University is a private liberal arts and sciences college located in Crete, Nebraska. It has additional campuses in Lincoln, Grand Island and Omaha. Doane prides itself on doing anything it can to help it’s students. They are known for their leadership in higher education, commitment to academic excellence, innovation and a special sense of place for each individual. These values have helped make Doane successful for over 140 years and will continue to help build an even stronger university for the future.
The Need
Doane had programs they were offering and were just getting into digital marketing. They needed some ads designed and landing pages to point the ad traffic to. They had some landing pages in place but they weren’t much of an experience, weren’t user friendly and didn’t stand out.
The Challenge
Designing a unique landing page to work for up to 20 different programs can be a bit of a challenge. We also needed to make sure the form wasn’t intimidating and guided the user toward submitting. In addition, there was a lot of information to organize and present well.
One unexpected challenge we hadn’t encountered before was the requirement to be WCAG AA compliant. Which meant we had to make sure to remove as many barriers as possible for those with disabilities interacting with the site. For design, this came down to font size, font color, background color, and other design elements. For development, this meant special tags for our forms, images, and links.
The Solution
We successfully designed a landing page that worked for multiple programs that was still consistent with the Doane brand and the recent “earn your shield” campaign they had just launched. We decided to always have the sign up for accessible no matter where on the page you were. (On desktop anyway.) In addition, we had different section style for each type of information to keep the user engaged and interested.
The Results
The landing pages were a success for Doane. They increased conversions and gave Doane a better online presence. We delivered static HTML files and they were able to plug everything into their system without issue. Most importantly, the Doane team was happy with the results.
“You were able to develop a product for us that improved our presence online. In addition, you took large amounts of information from us, made it digestible for our users and utilized a cool look while doing so.”
Mike Lefler
Senior Director of Strategic Communications