Aston University
Nestled in the heart of Birmingham, Aston University is renowned for its commitment to delivering top-tier education to a diverse student body hailing from over 120 countries. The university approached us seeking to elevate its digital presence to mirror its strong international reputation. We worked with their internal teams and external suppliers to undertake a comprehensive overhaul of their website, focusing on enhancing their site’s user experience, graphic design, and back-end functionality.
The client’s primary objectives included:
- Enhanced User Experience (UX)
Streamlining navigation to ensure prospective and current students, faculty, and stakeholders could effortlessly access key information - Content flexibility
Implementing a dynamic Drupal based content management system that allows seamless updates and customisation, ensuring the site remains current and engaging - Improved visibility and promotion
Boosting the university’s online presence to attract a broader audience, particularly during critical periods such as student clearing - Robust performance
Ensuring the website can handle high traffic volumes without compromising speed or reliability
Custom Drupal CMS development and delivery
Historically, the site experienced performance issues and crashes, particularly during peak periods such as the crucial clearing phase following A-Level results. These issues led to lost traffic, revenue, and reputational damage in the higher education sector.
To address this, the client assembled a team of external suppliers, including content creators, digital marketers, and delivery teams. Pedalo was responsible for UX and graphic design assets, technical implementation, and central project management, ensuring all internal and external stakeholders remained aligned and up to date.
With tight deadlines ahead of August clearing, the client prioritised migrating core course-related pages essential for prospective students. We rebuilt the homepage, course catalogue, and news section as a separate Drupal site, allowing additional content and functionality to be integrated over time. Given the project’s scale and complexity, seamless project management was critical, incorporating regular monitoring, reporting, change management, and risk mitigation from the outset.
We developed the site using a custom-built Drupal theme, focusing on front-end user experience enhancements, streamlined back-end admin tools, content migration, and SEO preservation, ensuring both performance and long-term scalability.
Project achievements
We launched the new site in July, just before the busiest period in August, and saw significant improvements in key metrics. Session duration increased by over 5%, mobile sessions rose by over 10%, and the average SEO keyword position improved by seven points. Even better results followed during the clearing period in August and beyond.
Improvements to server and Drupal stability, user experience, graphic design, front-end functionality, and back-end administration tools have optimised site performance, delivering excellent results for the client. The site now serves as a strong foundation for advancing their digital presence going forward.
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Higher education expertise
For more than 20 years we’ve partnered with higher education institutes to design, build and support complex digital platforms. Our expertise includes large-scale content management, student and staff portals, research showcase sites, accessibility compliance, and system integrations. We ensure your digital presence is robust, flexible and aligned with the needs of your institution. Call us on 020 8747 3274 or send us a message to get going.
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