The Client
Edison State Community College is a higher education institution serving students, parents, faculty, alumni, and local businesses across its community. The college provides academic programs, financial aid resources, and alumni opportunities, requiring a digital presence that effectively communicates with multiple audience segments.
As an institution focused on education and community engagement, Edison State needed a website that could serve as a central hub for information while presenting a professional, modern brand image.
The Situation
Edison State's website, built on the outdated Ektron platform, created frustrating navigation experiences for its diverse constituencies. The college needed to effectively communicate with students, parents, faculty, alumni, and local businesses, but its existing digital presence wasn't meeting these needs.
Rather than simply migrating its legacy website, Edison State recognized the need for a comprehensive digital transformation to better promote its programs and engage with its community. The college sought a partner who could help reimagine its online presence from the ground up.
The Challenge
Edison State faced numerous challenges. User research revealed friction points where visitors frequently abandoned their journeys, encountered outdated content, or resorted to search tools after struggling with navigation.
The self-hosted infrastructure had become increasingly difficult and costly to maintain. Staff members depended on developers for routine content updates, creating bottlenecks that prevented timely responses to institutional priorities — ultimately impacting the college's enrollment growth and community engagement.
Additionally, the website lacked consistent accessibility standards, potentially excluding community members and falling short of higher education compliance requirements. Its dated design system constrained visual storytelling capabilities and failed to present a cohesive brand identity across different sections.
The Solution
Edison State partnered with Acquia partner, Whereoware, to transform its digital experience, focusing on three key areas:
Enhanced content discovery and user experience
Whereoware began by analyzing user data to identify specific friction points. Following competitive research of other higher education websites, the team redesigned the navigation to allow users to explore by audience persona or goal. This approach helped better address immediate needs, improve digital accessibility, and offer more intuitive content paths. The team archived outdated pages and rearchitected the content flow to help different audiences find relevant information more easily. The improved navigation was also extended to Edison State's online catalogs, providing a consistent browsing experience across all digital resources.
Modern technical foundation
Whereoware migrated Edison State from Ektron to Drupal with Acquia Site Studio, moving from self-hosted infrastructure to Acquia's scalable cloud platform for improved security and flexibility. Unlike the previous system, Acquia's drag-and-drop editor and component-based design system made it easy for Edison State to create, govern, and manage content without developer assistance.
Elevated visual identity
Whereoware enhanced Edison State's digital presence by building a more robust, flexible design system. The team updated the college's style guide with refreshed typography, new color schemes, updated call-to-action buttons, and recommendations for integrating branded visuals across digital channels. Higher color contrast and clear design guidelines improved accessibility, while new webpage layouts and components supported future scalability.
Edison State's marketing team gained creative independence through a carefully configured Site Studio setup. They now access a visual library of content blocks to arrange and customize freely, while built-in guardrails maintain brand integrity through controlled color combinations and design elements.
The Results
Since launch, Edison State's new website has already generated substantial performance improvements, with year-over-year metrics showing:
- Increased engagement: The new site achieved a 12% increase in pageviews and a 9% increase in overall website traffic.
- Expanded reach: Total users increased by 23%, reflecting broader engagement with the college's digital presence.
- Enhanced staff capabilities: The new CMS and design system dramatically improved content management efficiency, allowing staff to create and update pages without developer support.
- Positive stakeholder feedback: Edison State's Chief Marketing Officer praised Whereoware for guiding best practices and recommendations, while staff reported that the new CMS is "so much easier to use" than their previous system.
- Improved storytelling: Marketing staff noted that their webpages now "tell a much better and more complete story about academic offerings, life at the college, and opportunities for businesses and the larger community."
