Thinkful digital bootcamp
Overview
In late 2020 Thinkful and Arizona State University Online began work on a collaboration where students could go through digital boot camps, run by Thinkful, and receive an official ASU certificate. This project was a collaboration between Thinkful, ASU Learning Enterprise, and the ASU Enterprise Marketing Hub. Together, we worked on a series of landing pages that would be informative and enticing to potential students while maintaining brand integrity for ASU and for Thinkful.
services
User experience design
User interface design
SEO optimization
Early challenges
How to combine 3 different styles and systems when time is of the essence
My team and I received this project in late 2020, with the understanding that everyone was aiming for an early January '21 release date.
Meanwhile, my team had just begun to roll out the new ASU digital design system, “Unity” — this would have been the ideal place to build out the new pages entirely in the new UDS. However, we were also working with developers from Learning Enterprise (the home of ASU Online, who would be hosting the pages) and they have their own design system. It was decided, for the sake of efficiency, that we would combine our design system and theirs so that the pages could be built and pushed live as quickly and easily as possible. We also had to be mindful of Thinkful’s brand and the ways that it would intersect with ASU’s bright, bold styles.
We had our graphic designers come up with a playful combination of the two logos, and decided that the black and white versions of Abbie Winters’ illustrations would merge seamlessly with the ASU branded elements.
Optimizing results
Determining the most cost-effective method for promotion
After working with all our collaborators and getting sign-offs from Enterprise, Thinkful, and ASU Online stakeholders, we launched the site in early January 2021, right on time.
Post-launch, we tracked basic metrics to determine how many visitors the site was getting, where they were coming from, and how many conversions there were.
While we had worked with SEO specialists to ensure each page would produce optimum Google search results, the initial launch also included a corresponding digital ad campaign that focused on targeted banner ads to drive traffic to the different programs. In May we reconvened as a team to review the analytics and we discovered that while the digital ads were working to increase site traffic, actual applications for programs were coming primarily from Google search results.
To cut ad costs and increase overall conversions, the programmatic ad campaign was cut in favor of increasing content on the site page to help drive more traffic from Google searches. The change was put into effect in June 2021 and resulted in almost twice as many program applications.
Outcomes
Within about one month our teams were able to come together and launch a project from scratch despite representing 3 different teams in several different timezones. We were also able to switch gears once the need became apparent, to ensure that the project was as effective as possible to raise revenue for the university and connect as many students as possible with programs they were looking for.
5
5 unique page template layouts: Home, Flex course, Immersion course, Blog overview, and Blog post
480
480 total program applications in 2021
318
318 applications from June-December 2021 — almost double the amount from January-June.
Special thanks
Illustrations courtesy of Abbie Winters and Thinkful.
Collaborators
Cristina Sabbatini, Associate Director of Marketing
David Gould, Senior Director Performance Marketing
Renae Hintze, Senior Marketing Copywriter
Jeroel Padilla, Product Design Manager
Dipak Purbey, Web Application Developer Sr.
© Allison Perlis 2021
