Oaklands College website
I was particularly impressed by how Itineris really took the time to completely understand the College as well as getting our target audiences involved in the design and development process.
Itineris has produced a fantastic website that is continuing to deliver exceptional results, and we find the whole team very accommodating and enjoyable to work with.
Sean Scully , Marketing Manager
Brief /Objectives
Oaklands College, a further education establishment in Hertfordshire with campuses in Welwyn Garden City and St. Albans, required a new engaging website to attract and encourage students to the College.
The website also needed to provide straightforward secure online services from course selection, enquiries and enrolment through to course payments for the first time.
Oaklands College was seeking a strategic partner to create a new design and build of its website along with a powerful CMS solution to provide a future proof and robust platform that enhanced the web audience experience.
Part of the site also needed to integrate with Oakland's course management system Unit-E.
Fulfilment
Key to the success of the project was to use students as part of the innovative design and development process. This insight combined with our digital marketing skills allowed us to create a strategy that centred on maximising the website for all marketing and course fulfilment for the students.
Our user-centred design process was used to create a website that was aesthetically clean and clear with easily recognisable icons in-keeping with the College's brand. This allowed Oaklands College to engage with its target audiences ranging from 16-24 year-olds.
The website's simple navigation focussed on target audiences by allowing learners to quickly find the information required from two routes, either by course area or by selected career.
We also created a unique 'career toolkit' solution to provide real career paths with course information, timescales and entry routes into industry. The toolkit takes learner goals and builds a personal development plan for the individual, based on preferences through the courses offered by the College.
The College was delighted with our simple-to-use content management solution, i.content. The ability to make live changes has introduced a new culture into the way that the website is used by staff.
Integrating with internal course management systems, course records are updated and drawn directly into the website to ensure that the latest information is always provided to learners.
The Oaklands College website has been recognised as one of the best in its field and has won two recent awards; an Outstanding Achievement Award at the International Media Awards 2011 and a Silver Award at the FE First Awards 2010.
Key statistics include:
- A growth of online visitors (38,000 visits in just three weeks)
- An increase in unique users (up 48.75%)
- An increase in full and part-time prospectus requests (651 in the first three weeks)
- Online enrolment to take place for the first time ever
- An increase in the average time spent on the website (four minutes and 12 seconds)
- An increase in course searches (231 specific searches in three weeks)