The Covid crisis has affected lives all around the world. The disruption caused due to the pandemic has been unprecedented in human history. While economic activity has taken a toll, students have also not been spared and have felt the heat of it. With classes suspended, campuses shutdown and exams postponed, it has left with no choice but to move to digital medium for continuation of schedules. Our client faced similar challenges with their website. An error prone and vulnerable website coupled with increased load caused the site to crash frequently, respond slowly, which hindered interaction with students. Apart from that, the graduation ceremony of the outgoing batch was delayed due to lockdowns imposed to tackle the pandemic.
Existing ecosystem caused disruption in online communication and new joining proceedings
- The site was migrated from Wordpress to Drupal 8 by their previous vendor couple of years back in an incoherent manner resulting in lots of glitches and issues.
- Designs used to get popped out.
- Many vulnerable modules were present causing security issues.
- This problem was a result of poor architecture design of the website which impacted the security of the website as modules were not updated, security checks were not conducted and data security was not handled adequately.
- Search Issues – Site search pulled up obsolete content and sometimes did not show the right results.
- A high developer dependency was present even for small additions and modifications to the site.
- Site loading speed ranged from 7 to 8 seconds.
The Ameex solution – building a seamless digital experience
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Ameex’s Digital Strategists, Drupal Consultants and Senior Architects built a solid digital architecture with focus on two main things
- Ease of content management
- Driving student and faculty engagement
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A detailed site audit was conducted to get insight into the challenges and understand the pain points of the client. The digital architecture of the site was accordingly revamped and redesigned with Drupal 8 upgrades and tackling the obstacles which lay ahead. The goal was to stabilize the site for better user experience
- Regular security patches were done to make the site stable and secure.
- Redefined architecture helped the administrator to publish content on their own without dependency on the IT team. This helped in becoming more self-reliable.
- The taxonomy of the site was altered to fix the search discrepancies which created difficulty for visitors to access their desired content.
- The issue of design misalignment was fixed to give a better look and feel of the website.
- The website sidebar was fixed for better navigation experience.
- Banners were put up to display health alerts regarding Covid and guidelines for students to follow in order to remain safe and healthy.
Chat functionality
To drive better user engagement and understanding of their visitors, a Drupal chat functionality was implemented through which the users could get relevant information regarding their courses, admissions, training programs and certifications. The live chat feature helped in providing a seamless digital experience to students. It also helped them to get information on the go through this feature. As a result, student interactions improved.
Building a graduation commencement ceremony website
In order to facilitate the graduation ceremony of the out-going batch of students, Ameex built a separate website in a short and challenging span of 3 weeks. The website focused on replicating all the aspects of a real-world commencement to the virtual world so that students did not feel left out as this day would be one of the most significant one in their life. The platform was equipped to handle the following attributes-
- Awards for various courses, trainings and certifications
- Commencement address by the President
- Videos from various faculty and staff members from various departments
- Students sharing their personal experiences.
- Individual messages from faculty and staff
- A culmination of photos and videos of the academic year in form of a year book to relive the journey which the students have gone through.
Value creation
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135%Improved website performance
The website loading time was reduced to 2.5 seconds. A 135 % improvement in website performance.
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10%Better Student Engagement
Improved communications between administration and students through Drupal chat functionality. A 10% increase in number of users logged in.
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50%Increase in Youtube subscriptions
Building a website in 3 weeks’ time to successfully hold a commencement ceremony. Youtube views and subscription boosted by 50%.
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7%Better visitor engagement
Systematic information display, banners and search functionality helped drive more conversations and visitors to the website. Number of visitors increased by 7% post revamp of website.
