University Experience Audit

Analysing the experience that a university and its competitors provide to prospective students.

Year

2023

Client

University in Australia

Project Type

CX Assessment & Heuristics Audit

Role

CX Auditor

Graph titled 'school leaver journey' that shows emojis on a dotted line.

Project Overview

Assess a university's experience for prospective students by pioneering an innovative audit tool.

Commissioned by a leading Australian university, my goal was to assess their prospective students' experience and, if deemed necessary, build a case for a website redesign.

Additionally, my task was to introduce a shiny new proprietary experience audit tool to the Australia and New Zealand region.

Objective

Understand how well leading universities in Australia help prospective students select a degree and select their university.

My Role/Responsibilities

Workshop facilitator
CX researcher & auditor

The problem

A prestigious Australian university doesn't understand if their existing experience serves prospective students.

The aim is to understand the university's current experience for prospective students from the moment that they learn about the uni to their enrolment. This understanding would be given perspective through comparison of competitor experiences at each stage.
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In order to make our findings useful, we needed to provide actionable insights for the client to optimise the university's digital presence and lay the groundwork for a successful website redesign project.

What I created

After flying to Brisbane and facilitating a workshop, I sat down, synthesised, and overthought everything!
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I created a scoring framework that encompassed 168 criteria across four strategic journey areas and three key user groups.

After conducting the audit with a teammate, I created a detailed report for the client that provided insights into the university's experience and showcased the industry-leading aspects of the and highlighting areas for improvement based on competitor benchmarks
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For my team, I created an audit framework suited for more complex and non-linear journeys. The original tool was developed for straightforward eCommerce websites so I Frankenstein-ed it for us to use on our more typical clients down in Australia and New Zealand.

Scorecards - Example of a scorecard for a competitor university

    The Process

    Creating actionable insights about the experience

    Understood the audit tool and our client

    • Had meetings with tool developers in the US to understand the framework and process
    • Flew to Brisbane and facilitated a workshop with the clients, fostering a great relationship with them and a better understanding of the university's offerings, needs and key users

    Synthesis and criteria development

    • Synthesised workshop outputs
    • Created nearly 200 criteria points for three key user groups
    • Developed a system to give numerical scores* to each criteria point

    *"Numerical scores??"

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    The audit used a quantifiable performance scoring system to help describe strengths and opportunities of the uni and its competitors. A weighted score was given based on the importance of the need to prospective students  and how well the experience met each identified need.

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    This meant that consistency was extremely important. Luckily, my teammate on this audit documented everything diligently and is an incredible collaborator. So, we were confident that our marking was consistent.

    Collaborative audit

    • Worked closely with a team member to conduct the audit, ensuring consistency in numerical scoring
    • Documented key journeys and reasoning for each score
    • Audited experiences of several universities, evaluating criteria performance scores

    Findings and impact

    • Presented a final report  to our client with actionable insights
    • Laid the groundwork for a successful future website redesign project
    • Created a new audit tool for my team that is scalable and better suited for our typical AUSNZ clients (it's not perfect yet, but I'm very proud of this)!
    Example: Graph portraying the scores of a phase

      The Principles

      Our grand statements



      We created scalable insights and principles for future website redesigns.
      Recommendations started with very specific quick wins then built to more solution-agnostic principles for how they could think about their website in the future.
      Below, you can read some of our loftier statements!

      Put the student first: Build and organise experiences around the needs of prospective students, not the needs of the organisation. We are not the customer.

      Progress not process:       Be outcome not output focused. Don't overload or get bogged down in process. Make it easy. Empower through options and choice.

      Empower self discovery:       Facilitate seamless progression towards prospective student goals. Provide pathways, recommendations and advice on an individual basis.

      Inspirational information:       Engage before we educate. It's less about what we do, and more about how we do it and what it empowers students to do.

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