DePaul University

Mightybytes is a valuable partner to DePaul. They’re smart, they ask good questions and they really listen, which makes the solutions they offer very much on point. They’re responsive and nimble, with a solid team of individuals who each contribute to our success.

— Sharon Miller | Director, Digital Experience and Analysis | DePaul University

Since Fall of 2016, Mightybytes has been a strategic partner to DePaul University, improving their online presence across departments, channels, and teams. Here’s how we help them meet key business and marketing goals.

As the nation’s largest Catholic university, DePaul University’s digital footprint spans ten colleges and dozens of departments that manage more than 100 individual websites, a multitude of social media accounts, and significant online advertising. Our work with their Digital Experience and Analysis team is driven by several important goals:

  • Identify ways to drive more qualified leads through digital channels.
  • Improve design and content to provide a better overall experience for users while also increasing conversions.
  • Find ways to consolidate team efforts, build capacity, and improve processes to save time.

To reach these goals, we take an iterative approach toward continuous improvement. Multiple small projects with clear parameters move us closer to desired outcomes that support larger business goals. Whenever possible, we test deliverables with real users to ensure DePaul’s goals are also aligned with those of its users.

Below are some of the ways we have applied this cyclical approach.

Side-by-side pages from a Digital Sustainability audit for DePaul University
Pages from the Digital Sustainability Audit Mightybytes conducted for www.depaul.edu.

Website Sustainability Audit

In late 2022, we ran a sustainability audit on DePaul University’s core website. The university website was self-hosted and built on an outdated platform that impeded their ability to meet key performance and marketing objectives. To prepare for a potential website redesign, the Digital Experience and Analysis team wanted to set a baseline for metrics to consider improving.

Mightybytes audited the website for key sustainability and performance metrics, providing a detailed report with recommendations to prioritize during the site redesign process.

The website sustainability audit included:

  • An estimate of website emissions over the course of a calendar year
  • Emissions comparisons against five other regional university websites
  • A list of priority pages with the biggest problems
  • Key insights and prioritized recommendations to improve website performance and efficiency in three categories:
    • Green Hosting
    • Page Performance
    • User Experience
  • Training recommendations to get their team up to speed on sustainable web design practices

With this report, the university not only has a clear roadmap for prioritizing sustainability as part of its overall digital strategy, but also put in place significant performance improvements on its current platform.

Content & SEO

Our content and SEO work for DePaul began by first auditing the core university site, followed by several individual college sites. This helped us identify ways to improve content, search rankings, and conversions for those pages. Over the months that followed we developed a consistent reporting methodology to track ongoing recommendations, improvements, and results.

Statistics showing improvement in keyword ranking.
We improved rankings on 80% of DePaul’s target keywords. 62% of these terms ended up on page one of Google.

User Research & Testing

As part of the ongoing audits, we also identified ways to refine UI/UX and user flows across sites. To improve page conversions for key forms and content types, we facilitated several qualitative user testing sessions, drawing personal feedback from real users who matched target personas. Quantitative research using analytics data also helped us identify page abandonment trends, which informed design and content recommendations to improve performance on key forms and pages. Finally, we hosted a workshop with DePaul’s internal team to better understand user journeys across DePaul’s digital platforms toward conversion.

Card sorting exercise
Card sorting exercise during a user testing session.

Digital Strategy Training & Consulting

To work toward the goal of consolidating efforts and improving processes, the Mightybytes team also facilitated numerous strategy and training workshops on several important topics, such as how paid advertising and social media marketing should dovetail with organic SEO efforts to maximize results. These workshops helped internal DePaul teams coordinate and improve communications toward an end goal of decreasing monthly ad spend.

Our first DePaul workshop.
One of our first workshops with the DePaul team.

Ongoing Small Wins

Our work with DePaul is ongoing and to date has resulted in continuous small wins, each of which moves the university closer to its ultimate goal of providing a better user experience for current, past, and potential students while also improving page conversions. We’ll continue to explore new strategies for refining DePaul University’s digital marketing efforts in what has become a productive and mutually beneficial partnership.