MiraCosta College's #1 Marketing and Communications Tool

The Solution

A higher ed CMS purpose-built for intuitive navigation and brand consistency, ease of use and the ability to update content immediately, anytime, anywhere transformed the MiraCosta College website into a dynamic marketing and communications tool. Unexpectedly, it’s also pandemic-proof. 

After consulting with the IT, marketing and administrative departments at other colleges and universities, Huyck and her team ultimately chose Modern Campus CMS. 

“Strong references from peer institutions factored into our decision, along with the many features provided by Modern Campus CMS." — Kristen Huyck 

Intuitive Website Navigation 

In hindsight, Huyck would have deleted outdated webpages from each website before migrating to save time. However, working through such pages gave the team insight into the best way to create a logical navigational hierarchy designed around the way that students actually interacted with their website. 

“I likened the migration to a house remodel. We had all of our files within the CMS, but it was like having toilets in our living room—they weren’t in the right place, but at least we had toilets! Ultimately, migration took more time than we anticipated, but it also forced us to think outside the box and strategize on the best way to structure the website.” — Kristen Huyck

Brand Consistency 

Reflecting the school’s brand was also a priority early on. MiraCosta College is a forward-thinking, student-centric institution, but that message wasn’t clearly illustrated on their old website. 

“The need for brand consistency is critical on the website, which often serves as the first thing students, employees and the community see. With the use of CMS, folks can easily be provided with various degrees of access to ensure there are checks and balances within the website.” — Kristen Huyck

Ease of Use 

Fed up with how complicated it was to use their old CMS, the MiraCosta team welcomed the simplicity and ease of use that Modern Campus CMS customers enjoy. They also took advantage of the limitless pages that Modern Campus CMS allows schools to produce. 

These two benefits were gamechangers for Huyck’s marketing efforts. In the past, it was almost impossible to track ROI from postcards, texts and mailings that the college sent out to prospective students. 

“Now, I can build out a different landing page for each campaign for tracking purposes. It’s easy to create pages, and they don’t look horrible. None of us are web designers by trade, so the ability to copy a page or change out a picture allows us to pull campaigns together quickly.” — Kristen Huyck

Immediate Updates 

With Modern Campus CMS, designated content contributors can now revise and create web pages quickly and easily within predefined user permissions—no more bottlenecks waiting on one person to make changes to the site. 

“Modern Campus CMS empowers our content contributors while providing checks and balances for consistency and web governance. Omni also features version auditing, so we can see what is being changed and revert back if necessary. Plus, I teach in the classroom, so during implementation, I could show pages to students for their input, then make changes immediately. They could see their feedback go into effect immediately and know that their voice was being heard. It was the same with faculty and staff. Before Modern Campus CMS, I’d have to blame the CMS for not being able to make changes.” — Kristen Huyck

Accessibility 

Understanding that the website is the college’s front door, Huyck appreciated that with Modern Campus CMS, she could now make changes from any location and on any device. Even better, a single sign-on component eliminated the need to log into several different systems to make a simple change. 

“Frequently, I get urgent calls to make a website change, and I’ve had to pull over and literally update the website from my phone. But with Modern Campus CMS, it’s not a problem. It takes me no time to make changes and keep the website up to date.” — Kristen Huyck 

Pandemic Proof 

Huyck has always viewed the MiraCosta website as the most important marketing and communications tool at her disposal. This was especially apparent when the pandemic hit in early 2020. Overnight, implementing the new site became a necessity. Thankfully, employee training had already begun, so when the new website implementation was rushed to get online in July 2020, all faculty and staff were ready. 

“With the pandemic, our website became a critical source for all campus information—even information that had not been included on our site before. Anything printed for that spring, such as class schedules, never saw the light of day. It also became the most up-to-date and accurate source for updates on campus hours, such as tutoring and counseling schedules and ever-changing health information. More than any other campus resource, students and employees turn to our website as a trusted source of information. This isn’t a temporary fix; the idea of our campus website being a comprehensive source of information is here to stay.” — Kristen Huyck

 

The Future

It’s been a year since MiraCosta College fully made the switch to Modern Campus CMS, and the results have been impressive. In 14 months, the number of website users has increased 68% and page views are up 63%. Session time is also 5.5% shorter, an indication that website visitors are able to find the information they need more quickly. 

With implementation complete, Huyck sees this as just the beginning of the school’s digital transformation. 

“We never want to be done with our website. Now, we’re asking how we can challenge ourselves to make it better, how can we simplify the experience even more for students and how can we become experts in personalization, which is the next big shift in higher ed.” — Kristen Huyck

Fortunately, MiraCosta College won’t have to go it alone. Along with Modern Campus CMS, the college has also implemented a suite of Modern Campus products, including Destiny One for non-traditional student management, and Acalog for catalog management. With these tools, the web team can stay up to date and focused on the work at hand instead of contemplating what technology needs to be updated. 

“We get very focused on our tasks and often don’t have the time to stay current on technology or even how different systems integrate with each other. But Modern Campus CMS is the number one CMS for community colleges. It’s nice to have a partner like Modern Campus that maintains and updates our system with features before we know we even need them.” — Kristen Huyck