Schreyer Honors College
They only admit the best of the best – it was time to design a site as exceptional as their graduates.
20%↑
Increase in Applications
The Schreyer Honors College at Penn State provides academic enrichment opportunities for the top 3% of the undergraduate population, approximately 1,800 students a year. The college encourages academic excellence with integrity and a global, engaging perspective.
Though the college had a solid reputation, a well-defined brand, extensive audience data, and a world-class technical team, its website needed attention. The site was five years old, was not mobile-friendly, and was difficult to navigate.
Schreyer needed a site built with prospective students in mind—one that featured a fresh look, was mobile-friendly, and designed to help users quickly find the information they needed.
Given the clearly defined project, Stamats took a streamlined approach, moving from a focused discovery process directly into architecture and design.
The architecture and navigation were planned with the needs of prospective undergraduate students front and center. A mobile-first approach guided everything from navigation cues to photo specifications. Within an overall clean look, we designed the homepage for dramatic, edge-to-edge photos that grow or shrink with screen size.
We also retained the Scholar’s Medal, an important icon for the college, with a crisp close-up in the feature carousel and as a symbolic foundation in the footer. Finally, we delivered functional templates that gave Schreyer’s in-house team the means to develop more templates while maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout the site.
Traffic has increased steadily, and applications are up 20%. Schreyer’s communications and IT teams continue to work well together, and the college has developed an ongoing plan to continue to expand the site for additional audiences.
-
The Challenge
The Schreyer Honors College at Penn State provides academic enrichment opportunities for the top 3% of the undergraduate population, approximately 1,800 students a year. The college encourages academic excellence with integrity and a global, engaging perspective.
Though the college had a solid reputation, a well-defined brand, extensive audience data, and a world-class technical team, its website needed attention. The site was five years old, was not mobile-friendly, and was difficult to navigate.
Schreyer needed a site built with prospective students in mind—one that featured a fresh look, was mobile-friendly, and designed to help users quickly find the information they needed.
-
The Project
Given the clearly defined project, Stamats took a streamlined approach, moving from a focused discovery process directly into architecture and design.
The architecture and navigation were planned with the needs of prospective undergraduate students front and center. A mobile-first approach guided everything from navigation cues to photo specifications. Within an overall clean look, we designed the homepage for dramatic, edge-to-edge photos that grow or shrink with screen size.
We also retained the Scholar’s Medal, an important icon for the college, with a crisp close-up in the feature carousel and as a symbolic foundation in the footer. Finally, we delivered functional templates that gave Schreyer’s in-house team the means to develop more templates while maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout the site.
-
The Results
Traffic has increased steadily, and applications are up 20%. Schreyer’s communications and IT teams continue to work well together, and the college has developed an ongoing plan to continue to expand the site for additional audiences.
