Northland College's web site receives national honors

June 16, 2009

The redesigned Northland College web site, www.northland.edu, has been honored with a Silver Medal by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). CASE is an international organization for professionals working in educational fund raising, alumni relations, marketing and communications.  The award was one of five given in the organization’s 2009 Circle of Excellence Awards Program in the category of complete institutional web sites.

A web site has the potential to be one of the most effective tools available for communicating with prospective students, alumni, and the world, for that matter," said David Wahlberg, Northland’s vice president for marketing. "When we began an overhaul of our marketing program, we knew that the web site would be one of our most important elements. Data gathered since the web site went live in November shows that visitors are spending more time on our site and accessing more pages of information. That’s the best measure of success, but recognition from our peers is nice, too.

Senior communications specialist Charmaine Swan served as project leader on the redesign. Her task was to coordinate efforts between members of the campus and Flint Interactive, a Duluth firm that provided the technical expertise behind the web site.  In addition to meeting the growing expectations of savvy web visitors, the site needed to match design elements of a new admissions marketing program created in partnership with Stamats, a nationally known higher education marketing firm.

"This was truly a cross-campus effort," said Swan. "Our office was charged with completing a large task in a short amount of time and because we wanted to redesign the site not only from a visual perspective, but a structural one as well, we relied on different offices to help throughout the planning and development process. I think this award proves that we achieved both goals because now we have a site that fits our brand image and also a site that is easier to maintain and keep the content fresh, up-to-date, and dynamic."

The site was built using an open-source content management system customized by Flint Interactive to pull information stored in a database. Key features include bold photography, student and alumni profiles, testimonials, a calendar of events, and fast facts about the College.

"Unlike a brochure, which at some point goes to the printer and is finished, work on a web site is never done," said Wahlberg. "We continue to add information, pictures and features to make it easier for people to communicate with us.  Then we monitor actual usage so we can make improvements based on our visitors’ needs. It is more than a full time job, but worth it when you see prospective students from all over the United States contact us because they found something on our web site that matched their interests."