Harvard University

This Cambridge-based ivy league university needs little introduction. Known for being one of the most prestigious network of schools worldwide, Harvard’s .edu site had the luxury of setting its sights far beyond its reputation for excellence—and instead the site could focus on its customer service: welcoming a broad audience to the school and efficiently guiding them to the information they need.

Happy Cog distilled Harvard’s existing wealth of content into a hub accelerating users off of the homepage as quickly as possible, into the department, school, or giving opportunity needed. As a result, traffic off the homepage increased by over 100% after the redesign, a critical business case and requirement the Harvard team to used in expanding their reach into Admissions and other outposts in the Harvard experience.

What we did

Research
Content Strategy
Design & Branding

Industry

Higher Education

We positioned Harvard.edu’s home page as a content hub to quickly direct visitors to the information they need.

Content strategy consulting was developed a new voice and tone for Harvard content, striking a balance between authority and approachability. Harvard content managers created content, Happy Cog content strategists edited it, and the collective expertise grew through content strategy workshops and training. We co-presented our work alongside our Harvard partners at Confab in 2013 as a testimonial to our successful collaboration.

We gave Harvard the tools they needed to publish and extend this system: a digital style guide and a suite of custom Drupal themes. These customizable themes allow smaller teams and departments to benefit from an ease of authorship and website publishing, while the university ensures governance and brand constancy across a host of digital corners of their shared universe.