It’s a challenge to build a user experience that works for every student. As students go through the journey of researching schools, applying, and accepting, and finally attending a school, their needs change.

Starting college or university is exciting but scary. There are so many things to consider and so many programs being offered, that the process can be overwhelming for potential students. Meanwhile, returning students want easy access to resources and services from across campus at their fingertips.

While designing a great navigation, clear calls to action, and engaging landing pages is incredibly important, a great search experience can make or break the experience. If users don’t find what they’re looking for, they might assume that it doesn’t exist.

An effective search experience is especially important as universities and colleges often have large, content-heavy websites, that have to support a search experience across multiple websites, with more advanced search features for programs and courses content.

In this session, we’ll walk through the process of designing a successful search experience that delivers on user expectations. We’ll talk about:

• Mapping out search experience pathways
• Inviting users to search
• Creating highly searchable content with metadata and taxonomy
• Designing engaging search results
• Selecting the search features that users actually need
• Ensuring that the search experience is accessible