a world-class digital user experience for study abroad

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› Project: Reinvent CEA Global’s digital brand and experience to improve usability, grow membership and create revenue growth by completely redesigning the website, online application, student profile and student portal.
› Position: Principal Consultant
› Year: 2005
› Project Summary: See below

Study abroad provider CEA, an Inc. 500 fastest growing private company, turned to Akgold to redesign the digital channels experience to the delight of students, counselors and parents.

Services:

› Consulting
› Strategy
› Ideation
› Group Facilitation
› User Experience Design
› Rapid Prototyping
› Creative Design
› Brand Alignment

Opportunity

Cultural Experiences Abroad (CEA) provides study abroad programs for US college students. CEA’s mission is clear: Create and facilitate opportunities for personal growth and global understanding through quality international education and cultural experiences. CEA’s commitment to this mission has resulted in CEA’s explosive growth.

In 2003, CEA made the Inc. 500 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Cultural Experiences Abroad was listed as the 67th fastest growing company. In 2004, CEA made the Inc. 500 for the second year in a row. While CEA was doing many things right, the CEA website was clearly the weak link in the chain and it was not in line with CEA’s core value of Service First.

Solution

CEA turned to Akgold to help raise the bar and redesign the digital channels experience. Co-designing with the CEA Marketing, Brand, Technology and Leadership teams, Andrew helped to facilitate a core strategy, a digital roadmap and then implement the winning design.

The core goals for the CEA website redesign were:

Redesign the interface to make it highly engaging, professional, consistent, and extremely intuitive to increase site traffic and streamline browsing.
Increase conversion of qualified leads.
Create a student website to facilitate retention effort and to alleviate bottlenecks with enrollment team.
Develop a site optimized for natural search.

Results

CEA’s new digital experience not only reflected the true CEA brand, it also met the business goals. It helped meet the user’s needs and allowed students to find the right program, easily apply online and then perform the enrollment process through a clear and intuitive student portal.

CEA redeployed its new site right on time. The results of AKGold’s efforts were: increased interest in CEA’s programs, increased applications, increased enrollment, and the capability for CEA to manage the Enrollment and Post-Enrollment process online. This created a lot of excitement at CEA and around the world.

Summary

Endorsement

“AKGold Internet helped give CEA the visual interface that aligns our website with our core business functions and supports our business process each step of the way. From our online application, to the student portal to the website, all of which are intuitive, vibrant and clear, Andrew worked hand in hand with our organization to understand our business and position CEA right at the top in the Web arena for study abroad programs. Our old website made me cringe and our new one is a true source of pride for CEA. In addition to working flexibly with our schedule, AKGold completed the project on time and in budget.”

Brian J. Boubek, Executive Director, CEA Global

Clarify Goals & Users

Akgold helped CEA synthesize the core goals for the project. Next came focusing on the users by creating personas and scenarios. By defining the goals and focusing users during the design journey, the team was able to hit the target.

Co-Design

Partnership and working hand in hand with the CEA team was the key to success. Andrew worked on-site at critical stages to drive the project forward. During the design phases, because the team had gelled, co-designing was a positive and enriching experience for everyone.

IA and Flow Charts

This phase consisted of defining the goals for the CEA redesign, characterizing the audience, pinpointing the key areas for supporting the sales process, analyzing the competition, defining applicable web technology, and creating a series of specialized flow charts and key page prototypes.

Visual Design

The Visual Design phase consisted of a complete design analysis, exploration of design angles and navigational layouts, distilling these into a single thematic focus, followed by completion of design elements and then the preparation of the html templates.

Partnership with Engineering

Andrew worked hand in hand with CEA’s in-house technology and engineering team. By having constant communication and having all asset deliverables clearly organized in the CEA project extranet, CEA was able to easily implement all Akgold deliverables. This clear and constant communication enabled the project to progress smoothly each step of the way.

Summary

› Consulted with CEA Global to redesign digital channels experience

› Co-designed with CEA’s Marketing, Brand, Technology and Leadership teams

› Created personas and scenarios to focus on the user

› Created design strategy for brand alignment and competitive positioning

› Produced wireframes, flowcharts and information architecture for Online Application, CEA Website and Student Portal

› Produced iterative designs and prototypes and final visual, interactive and editorial design

› Delivered final HTML, CSS & Javascript code

› Delivered Online Style Guide with font, color and grid specifications

a world-class digital user experience for study abroad

Study abroad provider CEA, an Inc. 500 fastest growing private company, turned to Akgold to redesign the digital channels experience to the delight of students, counselors and parents.

Opportunity

Solution

Results

Endorsement

Clarify Goals & Users

Co-Design

IA and Flow Charts

Visual Design

Partnership with Engineering

Summary

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