ABOUT
Concept
For almost 80 years and for more than 100,000 members, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) has empowered educators to lead with passion, amplifying their voices and the voices of students. They help educators put vision into action so that every student can flourish.
But, a lot has changed since ASCD began. Based on their continued engagement with educators across the country, the team at ASCD identified a clear need to redesign their website to meet the evolving needs of an increasingly connected educator workforce. Their website had struggled to keep up the pace of change, with cluttered and confusing navigation, technology infrastructure that was siloed and falling behind, and a brand that had become diluted with sub-brands and confusing messaging.
We partnered with ASCD to reimagine their overall digital experience and transform it into a more modern web presence with a cleaner, streamlined design. Our objective was to reimagine the ASCD site as a user-first, engaging web presence centered around their passionate community of life-changing educators, giving them the information, tools and support they need, when and how they need it.
Execution
To reimagine the ASCD experience, we partnered on digital strategy, experience and visual design, UX research and workshops, content strategy and technological implementation.
The project followed best-in-class agile methodologies, with features released and tested with real users for efficacy, and then adjustments made to the designs based on user feedback. First, we conducted a discovery phase, including user research and interviews to understand the goals of the site's visitors and an audit of the current website to understand how it stacked up against those expectations. We used Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation to react quickly on identified issues and test new solutions that cater to ASCD’s end-users.
Improved user experience and functionality features include:
- A streamlined navigation, creating an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive user experience
- A simplified and clear information architecture and new meganav gives users easy access to the most important sections of content on the site.
- Organized and consistent page structures reinforce this hierarchy and provide an intuitive way to explore and consume ASCD content.
- A preview that lets readers stay where they are on the site, but still navigate through book chapters, make notes and highlight important sections, streamlining the experience and making it easier for educators to return to exactly where they left off.
- Easier access to short form content, including moving the most important information to the top of articles - like read time and an outline of the topics - improves engagement with educators and reflects the authoritative source that ASCD is in the industry.
To differentiate from the competition, the ASCD website was replatformed to Contentful, a cloud-based, headless content infrastructure that gives the ASCD team built-in flexibility with structured, repeatable and scalable content, bringing content to the widest audience possible, as quickly as possible.
Results
The new ASCD website is a modern digital experience that aims to help life-changing educators continue to make the incredibly positive difference they do, every day. The simplified navigation creates an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive user experience, with organized and consistent page structures.
In the month after its launch, pageviews per user session increased 25%, demonstrating that users are more engaged with the website and its content.
Bounce rates decreased by 13%, meaning a more efficient and enjoyable user experience for users.
Now, ASCD's digital experience ignites passion and leadership in the educators that are shaping the future of the profession.