Occidental College
- Art Direction
- Development
- Drupal
- Migration
As Los Angeles’ first and only liberal arts college, Occidental has an unflagging commitment to provide a truly superior academic experience for its students. The problem with their existing site was that prospective and current students found it difficult to find all the information they needed in one easily accessible place. Across all user groups there were complaints about navigation, and content was often out of date. There was also the perception that the site did not reflect the atmosphere on campus or the brand identity.
Our Process
We started by auditing OXY’s content and reviewing what was really necessary. Many pages hadn’t been touched in years. We were able to remove about half of all pages after this review. We also used our content audit and analytics review to completely retool the primary navigation, making it easier for students to find what they were looking for. We built a content strategy around driving traffic to the apply pages, and those pages saw a 70% increase in traffic.
The current CMS configuration was difficult to use and understand. Simple tasks were cumbersome to complete, and there was difficulty formatting content within the text editor. With a clean version of Drupal, we were able to migrate content over and make editing easier. Modular components were developed to give editors flexibility when creating pages on the website, while staying on-brand.
A Redesign That Delivered
The Occidental College website redesign didn’t just win awards, it drove measurable results. By combining strategy, storytelling, and a student first design system, the new site transformed engagement across platforms and audiences.
A 6+ Year Collaboration
KWALL and OXY started collaborating in 2017. Since then we’ve completed 2 main site redesigns and multiple microsite design projects.
OXY Campaign for Good
A platform for campaign donations as well as reports, donor stories and media.
OXY Arts Microsite
A site dedicated to OXY’s vibrant visual arts scene.
Moore Lab of Ornithology
Specialty site for a specific department. Extending the OXY brand in a more whimsical direction.
Obama Scholars Microsite
Our first project with OXY way back in 2017!
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