The 2020 Davey Awards honors four mStoner clients with Gold and Silver Awards in the University/School Website category for their recent and successful redesigns.
The Davey Awards are the largest, most prestigious awards competition for the “Davids” of creativity. The award program focuses on smaller agencies that derive their strength from big ideas rather than stratospheric budgets.
Gold Award — Websites – Schools/Universities
Dakota State University
The Challenge:
DSU unveiled a new visual identity in May 2019. To further its branding efforts, DSU developed a new website to support the new brand and main business goal: to improve the digital experience of prospective undergraduate students considering DSU through strategic insights gained by mapping the customer journey. A secondary goal was to highlight the research and academic strengths of the university and its faculty and leadership.
Project Results:
DSU launched a multichannel marketing campaign along with the website to roll out the new brand. “We’re hearing people say they have never seen the amount of marketing that they’ve seen from DSU,” Joelle Johnson, DSU website editor, said. “We’re running digital and out-of-the-box strategies in our campaigns. But no matter how people arrive at the website, they all have a consistent experience with our brand. The site itself is just visually beautiful, and the side navigation and all of the components mStoner created really promote our identity as a university that is moving forward or rising, which is our tagline. We have definitely seen an increase in awareness of who we are and what we offer.”
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University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
The Challenge:
The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford wanted to accomplish two major goals. First, make the website work better for its most important audience: prospective students. Second, showcase what really sets Pitt-Bradford apart.
Project Results:
mStoner leveraged Pitt Bradford’s unique, beautiful location and high-impact photography to showcase what set the university apart from others while also making big changes to the site’s functionality. Traffic is up on key pages such as admissions, academics, and program pages. The overall time spent on the site has nearly doubled.
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Purdue University Northwest
The Challenge:
PNW formed in 2015 from a merger of two separate Purdue campuses: Purdue Calumet and Purdue North Central. Both campuses had 70 years of history and accomplishment to share on a combined website and PNW also needed to layer a new brand identity atop that complex story. Understandably, the first website that PNW launched was an okay-for-now mashup of 27,000 pages. They knew it suffered from a lot of outdated content, a sprawling information architecture, and an unmanageable back-end — but it would be two more years before the timing was right to fully redesign.
Project Results:
PNW’s Director of Web Services James Seidler reports that the strongest success they have seen is the performance of their academic program pages. Traffic to program pages increased 215% over a four-week period (prior to COVID-19). The new site also features a request for information (RFI) form at the very top of each program page, which captures visitors’ interest in the specific program.
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Read the case study.
Silver Award — Websites – Schools/Universities
National Louis University took home a silver award for its successful website redesigns.
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Travis Koury Marketing Manager As marketing manager, Travis Koury shares mStoner’s thought leadership and service offerings across a multitude of channels. He thoughtfully applies digital marketing best practices to ensure higher education marketing and communication professionals can easily discover and access mStoner’s helpful resources, primary research, and on-demand content.