Helping a progressive university combat the challenges of a global pandemic
Located across two campuses in West Sussex, the University of Chichester is a progressive public university with approximately 5,700 students. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the university was forced to face its next round of open days without the ability to greet students in person on-site, for the first time in its history.
Following changes in virtual accessibility, the University of Chichester had to find a new way to offer open days online. Keen to showcase the university’s offerings to prospective students, it was important to maintain its previously high number of open-day registrations both virtually and in person.
To do this, we needed to design and build a brand-new virtual open day microsite, and design digital assets for a strong PPC campaign to advertise the university. Not only that, but we had to react fast to the ever-changing government guidance and restrictions.
From a creative perspective, the university’s existing website lacked the flexibility that was required for its open-day information and registration. Therefore, a new microsite was required to create the same environment as an open day, offering a new avenue for marketing to students.
With a large array of virtual tours, presentations and course information, the website had to be high-performing with the ability to handle the high levels of traffic typically expected from an on-site open day event.
Our in-house team delivered a microsite designed in a lanyard style, emulating the open-day experience and offering seamless logins for students. The site featured 31 pages with seven templates, providing creative content ‘rooms’ for users to explore various subjects. By capturing the prospective students’ data upon entering the site, the university was able to provide each student with a tailored experience.
The PPC campaign was a huge success, achieving a 300% higher open-day registration rate compared to the previous on-campus event.
Due to our team’s hard work, the university plans to continue offering virtual open days for the foreseeable future. We are so proud to have contributed to the University of Chichester’s first ‘virtual open day’ and look forward to its continued success.
The PPC campaign surpassed expectations and successfully increased open day registrations by 300% when compared to its previous ‘on-campus’ open day.
In 2020 alone, the virtual open-day microsite achieved over 20,000 page views across the inaugural open day and subsequent second open day.
The microsite Tann Westlake produced has hosted over 2,000 prospective students across each virtual open day that has taken place since 2020.
To ensure maximum reach across our pay-per-click campaigns, University of Chichester virtual open-day ads were created in over 40 formats across Google’s network.
Working with Tann Westlake has been a really easy process. The team is responsive and quickly understands our brand guidelines and what we’re trying to achieve. We’ve been working with Tann Westlake for 10 years on several projects including out-of-home advertising, digital advertising and the biggest project of all, a virtual open day website.
This was done in around four weeks and achieved great feedback from prospective students and stakeholders. It included videos, live chat widgets and lots of written content. The team at TW made it very easy to do, especially in the short timeframe. I would highly recommend working with TW!
