University of London
Becoming a strategic partner for a global leader in distance and blended Learning
The University of London is a global leader in distance and blended learning, educating over 240,000 students from 180 countries. They are nationally recognised for the delivery of high-quality curriculum related to the humanities and are committed to broadening access to higher education.
Challenge
Housing 18 prestigious institutions, the University of London was challenged with simplifying their complex digital infrastructure distributed across several legacy technologies. They required a unified digital space that optimised course discovery for prospective students. Drawing upon our extensive experience of working with universities, we understood the distinctive challenges they faced and leveraged our expertise to devise a bespoke digital strategy.
Approach
Adopting a multi-dimensional and dynamic approach, we undertook an aesthetic overhaul of the website, invoking the architectural motifs of the emblematic Senate House to strengthen the university’s brand identity.
At the same time, we redeveloped the website's technical implementation using the Drupal content management system, marking a significant stride towards a more streamlined and maintainable digital infrastructure. We created a custom plug-in, integrating the university's DotMailer account with Drupal's WebForm module, which gave administrators full control over data-mapping between form fields on the website and within the email marketing platform.
Following the launch of the new website, we evolved into a strategic partner for the university, crafting a digital platform that coordinates content across various departments. This enabled a single technology approach and a shared visual language, condensing over 150 microsites into a coherent and streamlined user experience.
Results
Numiko's partnership with the University of London demonstrates how a strategic digital approach can simplify complex digital landscapes, resulting in a significantly improved user experience and far greater maintainability. The transformation yielded a unique, user-focused website that prioritises student recruitment. The thoughtfully crafted user journeys we implemented resulted in easier navigation, increased engagement, and higher conversion rates.
The new website quickly achieved some outstanding results:
- Average session duration increased by 119% demonstrating that users were spending far more time engaging with the website
- Organic traffic increased by 227% demonstrating vastly improved search engine optimisation
- International traffic increased by 556% demonstrating that the university is now reaching new international audiences
"Numiko has helped us overcome some of these challenges that we've experienced by essentially being an extension of our digital team…They're very much embedded within our organisation. They really understand us as a business, who our users are. Sometimes it can be difficult for us to articulate sometimes what it is we think we want to do. And Numiko work really well with us to help us understand what it is we need to do. "