Emory University Business School

Design

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School ranks as a top-tier business school. For over a century, Goizueta has evolved its educational programs to meet the changing definition of today’s business leader. The website is Goizueta’s core digital asset and a key investment to achieve this mission.

Standing in the way was a legacy Content Management System (CMS) platform, a scattered web ecosystem, and a design that was out-of-sync with student engagement goals. Goizueta partnered with Mediacurrent to connect the dots between the brand narrative, Drupal development, and digital user experience. The new award-winning design captures the depth of opportunity available to the school community, from on-campus resources to international education programs.

Why Drupal was chosen:

Flexible and adaptable to support evolving needs
Open source software proven in higher education
Scalability
Accessibility

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):

The Challenge

To compete with top-20 business schools, Goizueta needed to capture the essence of the student experience and communicate it via the website. In order to do this, the web team strove to sharpen their website and digital processes as well as empower users in the authoring experience to create thoughtful digital user experiences.

Stuck on a legacy platform, non-technical editors faced a cumbersome publishing process. The team dreamed of editorial flexibility to communicate the school’s one-of-a-kind community culture.

The goal to increase prospective student engagement and applications called for a fresh, attention-capturing design strategy. Critical to Goizueta’s digital success was Drupal 8 — an experience management platform that evolves with them.

Mediacurrent’s Solution

The Mediacurrent design team delivered with a visual presentation full of Emory’s imagery and branding, employing several patterns of persuasion in the design system. Beyond visual appeal, the design provides prospective learners with an intuitive way to explore a wide range of program offerings and initiatives. Animated components create focal points on data to establish authority and social proof.

When Emory needed a more flexible foundational platform, Mediacurrent’s Rain install profile eased the transition from Cascade to Drupal 8. Mediacurrent’s front-end team executed this challenging design and upheld web accessibility standards throughout, creating flexible, inclusive and reusable components.

Tailoring Content For Higher Education

Step one of the redesign: uncover the data needed to make better decisions. We worked together to define not only how the new Drupal 8 platform would achieve usability, content authoring, and accessibility goals, but also reach broader operational marketing and revenue objectives.

Mapping the Journey from Prospect to Student

A digital strategic analysis explored user behavior, providing actionable insights to inform design and development, foster engagement and boost conversion rates.

Defining Goals and Key Performance Indicators - Organizational goals were defined and remained at the forefront of all decisions to ensure the website served Goizueta’s mission and purpose. Establishing KPIs guided our Google Analytics audit to ensure Goizueta could confidently measure and track their progress.  
Creating Content that Connects - User personas based on demographics, personal values, and primary usage channels were created to inform site navigation decisions and support Goizueta’s ultimate goal of effectively communicating their brand promise. A site map, user journeys, and desktop and mobile wireframes defined clear conversion pathways.

Design for Emotion

From visiting the campus to exploring the school’s communications, signage, and publications, we immersed ourselves in Goizueta’s culture. At the same time, we collaborated with the Goizueta team to learn about what worked in the current brand and what did not.

A mood board served to set the tone for the new design system, where shapes from the school’s beautiful architecture serve as brand elements to speak to the Goizueta promise: business for the greater good.

Component-Based Drupal 8

Mediacurrent’s development team tested the limits of Drupal 8 to put full publishing control of the content for the flexible components into the hands of non-technical editors.

Across the site, 64 custom components allow for great flexibility and scale in the authoring experience. Paragraph Handlers serve to preprocess components in a much more streamlined manner.

Integrating with External Systems

Built to integrate with external systems, Goizueta’s new Drupal platform connects to Slate and Expertfile. This provides a foundation to share forms, faculty profiles, and other data.

Comparing Programs

A Drupal-powered interactive React component allows prospective students to dynamically compare Goizueta programs.

Final Thoughts

Going beyond a website redesign, the strategic decision to adopt Drupal 8 nets Goizueta an experience platform primed for growth and risk mitigation. The AVA award-winning platform enables the marketing team to showcase the student community, legacy, and value of Goizueta programs. We’re proud to continue supporting that mission through our next phase of partnership post-launch.