How we conducted the business school choir

Wharton is the business school at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. It was established in 1881 and carries a storied past and deep traditions. Unfortunately, their website also has a storied past.

Over time, the site had grown in both size and complexity, relying on a wide range of tools and systems. This complexity made the site difficult to use for both Wharton's staff and students.

Work

The big challenge was to get all these different systems working in harmony. Wharton was upgrading their overall content management system (CMS) and needed integrations with their existing marketing software, customer relationship management tools, payment systems, program repositories, and more. Our content strategists began working to ensure that relevant, structured content was available to users, while our developers started building bridges between platforms to maximize their capabilities.

Solution

We deployed both custom and off-the-shelf integrations and automations that synced the new CMS with Wharton’s other digital tools, feeding up-to-date information where it needed to go and enabling more effective marketing and communications projects. For end users like students, the experience of researching and registering for programs was smooth and simple — even if the backend was a masterful arrangement of plugins, APIs and integrations.

Results

Supported by our continuous feature development, now including an overhauled program finder and a new mega-menu, Wharton’s site is easier to navigate and delivers current and useful content. On the back-end, the site has dramatically increased the number of leads generated for Wharton’s marketing team, helping them make a perfect pitch to prospective new students.