hey moscow

Barking & Dagenham College website and research

Whenever we take on a new website project, we use a combination of the following tools to find out how people are using the existing website.

• Google Analytics – to see which are the most important pages
• Crazy Egg – to see exactly where were clicking
• Visitor Surveys – to find out what people were trying to do on the site

Our research at Barking & Dagenham College‘s previous site indicated that people were primarily coming to the site to find a course to study, but couldn’t always find the right course and as they didn’t know the course title. For example, there were courses on Floral Design, but if someone searched for flower arranging nothing appeared.

To solve this, we built search facility that suggested options to people as they searched. In the screenshot below, you can see that we have entered the letters flo and been presented with three choices.

All of the three options above are linked to the same floral design course in the administration section of the website. Each course offered by the college can be associated with a set of keywords which appear in the search box.

This has allowed the college to finetune the search to accommodate all the different types of words that people use. Since the site launched 92% of all course searches have resulted in prospective students being shown a list of relevant courses.

“After a rigorous selection process we chose hey moscow as our partner to conceive and deliver a new website for the College. Their commitment and hard work has meant we have taken a huge step forward. The new site is driven by solid research and functionality, as well as being attractive and flexible.”

Anne Vessey
Communications & Marketing Manager