RPI homepage refresh
Auditing the existing site
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the oldest engineering school in America, and as they celebrate their bicentennial, I worked with them to refresh their official homepage where students, staff, and alums can quickly navigate to pre-existing pages.
As a school known for their famous alums, such as the inventor of the ferris wheel, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., or the "father of modern TV," Dr. Allen B. Dumont, I wanted to highlight the characteristics of such a prolific engineering school. The Institute was where generations of genius’ honed their skills and would go on to change history.
What the original homepage lacked was a sense of clean, sleek, efficient design. It didn’t draw in a highly academic, engineer-minded visitor demographic in it’s current state.
Client
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Deliverables
Home page
In collaboration with
Gold Rhino
The nav bar is a critical starting point for a user's experience
There were issues with the main logo being low res, and what seemed, 3 different sets of menus that misaligned.
The number of line breaks and pages was keeping users from being able to quickly visually explore the nav. There wasn't enough typographic hierarchy to seamlessly offer information to other pages.
A gallery offers user's a variety of insights into the RPI experience
Looking at the original "gallery", we were missing ways for the school to exhibit more events, more news, and listings that could engage users. The original gallery was static, and could only feature one listing at a time. There was also a blue CTA that did not fit in their brand guidelines that stuck out against their traditional red.
Insights from our prior project, Rensselaer Firsts
Having produced a prior website for the school, we learned a lot about how it performed against the original RPI homepage. Though the purpose of the RPI Firsts site was different from what a school's homepage has to offer, we updated a few of the systems from their pre-existing brand guidelines to make it fresh and new.
The numbers by comparison
Website engagement rates
rensselaerfirsts.com
56.26%
rpi.edu
46.08%
The overall site engagement rate for rensselaerfirsts.com is roughly 10 points higher than rpi.edu at 56.26%.
Site engagement for rpi.edu averages 46.08%.
Homepage avg. engagement rates
rensselaerfirsts.com
42 seconds
rpi.edu
21 seconds
The homepage for rensselaerfirsts.com has an average engagement time of 42 seconds.
However, the homepage for rpi.edu averages half the engagement time of rensselaerfirsts.com at 21 seconds.
Notable updates
Organizing the top nav
Before
After
Organizing the footer
Before
After
Adding a true slider gallery, lower on the page
Before
After
Give visitors clarity on navigating to the important pages after the header
Before
After
Click here to see the old and new site side-by-side