Virginia Tech

About This Project

Pulse Group professionals worked with Virginia Tech to re-design its Student Programs website, with the objective of making navigation and content more user-intuitive as opposed organization-driven. Our work focused on six major areas within Student Programs, including: Housing and Dining; Residence Life; Judicial Affairs; Fraternity & Sorority Life; Career Services; and, Planning and Business Services. As part of our efforts, we conducted an online survey with staff from each of the six departments to identify areas of web communication strength/weakness and completed in-depth personal interviews with each of the department heads and key marketing staff to better understand FAQ’s and assess potential future marketing/communication areas. In addition, we conducted 15 user-labs with more than 50 respondents including current/prospective students, faculty/staff and parents of incoming freshman/transfer students to identify information needs and challenges/frustrations with navigating current website. Based on our work, we made a number of recommendations related to information organization, navigation and layout/design that have been incorporated into the University’s web communications strategy.