The Challenge
Create a digital experience that lives up to an unmatched reputation.
To build a new website for the world's most well-known law school included repairing a complex information architecture to bring order to 10,000 pages of content. Replace an out-of-date content management system and fix an antiquated, inefficient publishing system in order the showcase the thinking and work of some of the top legal minds in the world. It also needed to catch up to modern accessibility standards.
The Insight
The work they share is too important to be overlooked.
It's no exaggeration to say that Yale Law School alumni are shaping in the world in which we live. Among them are more high-level judges than any school in the U.S., legendary legal minds, numerous Supreme Court Justices and even Presidents. They have no shortage of applicants and no difficulty attracting new students—but they did need to do a better job sharing the great work of the Law School with the world.
The Research
As we dug in we found another challenge: building consensus.
So how do you reorganize content and redesign a website with more than 10,000 pages in a way that gets a large group of very smart, very opinionated clients to agree on one solution? Seriously, there's not much we can teach Yale. But we did see they needed help getting everyone who works on those 10,000+ pages, to stay on the same page.
The Discovery
Then we had to figure out how to bring Yale Law School to life online.
We started with in-depth content mapping exercises—a combination of group workshops and one-on-one breakout sessions. From there, we build consensus, figuring out how the site and its content could work better for various audiences including the faculty, admissions, prospective students and other stakeholders.
Once we figured out the ideal workflow for the internal team at Yale Law School, the Primacy team got to work.
Smarter Experience
There's no punchline; we rose to the challenge.
Our user experience, content strategy and tech leads collaborated—architecting the Drupal content management platform to meet the needs of our client. We build a new website that leveraged new features, modules and tools that allowed for a large number of publishers, complex permissions, content tagging and custom search capabilities.
Then our web designers stepped in to combine a simple to explore content matrix with a brilliantly clean visual interpretation of Yale Law School's storied brand; using a combination of high-profile quotes and architectural photographs to translate the prestigious history of Yale into their online presence.
The Outcome
We launched a website conveying the history and prestige of Yale Law School.
Everyone knows Yale Law School is a big deal, and there had to be a better way to share their knowledge and impressive work with the world. We developed a clean, intuitive design and informational architecture that was up to contemporary standards and easy to navigate.
Our powerful content strategy and modern platform for story publishing allowed the school the ability to more effectively share their ideas. We launched a website that conveyed Yale Law School's history and prestige, creating an overall improved user experience.
- Director of Communications at YaleWe keep hearing how beautiful the site is, and people are telling us they can actually find things!
Dropping some data
Year One Numbers
85%
Increase in content consumption on the site
10k
Pages of content that we brought order to from its complex information architecture
600%
Increase in content consumption for events and on-campus happenings
93%
Increase in content consumption for graduate career development
