University of Chichester

Objectives

In response to the pandemic the University of Chichester, like many other universities, had to find a way to host open days without human contact. It was keen to showcase the university to prospective students and still maintain its strong open-day registration figures from the year before. 

In order for this to happen it needed to design and build a new virtual open-day microsite, as well as design digital collateral for its PPC campaign to advertise the university in time for registration in September 2021. 

Challenges

Previously, prospective students would have heard about the university through research at school or by going to a UCAS fair, but with COVID-19 those opportunities were lost.

From a creative perspective, the university’s existing website didn’t have the flexibility in the template layout that was needed for its Open Day information and registration. As such it required a microsite that could establish the same environment as an open day would and allow the university to remarket to the students that attended.

Solutions

Our team designed the microsite to emulate the open-day process and enabled students to login as part of the usual registration process, which was designed in a lanyard style. Flexibility was essential due to the amount of the content required. The solution was made up of 31 pages with seven different templates, including different content ‘rooms’ that allowed the students to go off into different subject areas that they were interested in, just like you would on an open day.

The PPC campaign was a huge success, with a 300% higher open day registration rate than the previous ‘on-campus’ open day. This was despite the rapid change in strategy and  challenging lead time.

Due to our team’s hard work, the university plans to run virtual open days for the foreseeable future, using the site we created, alongside conventional visits to ensure the safety of potential students and also their families. We were very proud to have helped the University of Chichester with its first ‘virtual open day’ and look forward to seeing the continued success of its virtual open days.