The New School Housing Website

AT A GLANCE

BUSINESS PROBLEM:

The New School Housing Department, responsible for bringing in millions of dollars to the university, was under new leadership and looking to improve its most important marketing tool, its website.

MY ROLE & METHODS USED:

I was part of a committee tasked with improving operational considerations for the department. I volunteered to use research to examine our customer's experience with the site. This proceeded as follows:

I worked with Marketing & Communications to obtain access to Google Analytics for our site, and identified the Summer Housing subpage as the most heavily trafficked. Summer Housing also represents our biggest revenue source.
I conducted in-person moderated usability tests with summer housing customers, giving them the task of locating the application on our site and recording their thoughts and success rate. I trained an assistant to help administer some of the tests.
I created a survey to send to summer housing customers to learn about how they found our housing, what they expected from the site, their overall experience,and what competitors they explored before deciding on us.
After presenting my data analysis to the team, they also asked me to help in exploring what a redesign of the site might look like. I conducted an open card sorting exercise using OptimaSort with selected customers to gain a sense of their mental models.

SELECTED OUTCOMES:

I helped educate the director and other stakeholders on how to read the analytics dashboard
The application button was made easier to find based on usability data
I am involved in the team working with Marketing to improve the website, utilizing my research, meeting in Fall 2020

challenge

In a time of increased pressure to meet revenue goals, The New School housing department was looking for ways to improve one of its most important marketing tools: the website. The Associate Director in charge of the site was looking for ways to improve it, but unsure how. I volunteered to explore the topic further as part of the Operations committee within housing.

process

OUTCOME

I created a plan where I would check in with the team after each step of the process and offer insights and recommendations. To get a sense of where to begin, I first contacted the Marketing department to get access to the Google Analytics dashboard for the page, which had previously been unseen by our department. The liaison there trained me on how to view it, and I noted that the summer housing page of the website had by far the most traffic (43% of traffic and clear directional trends of traffic in months before summer). Summer Housing is a huge source of revenue for the department bringing in millions of dollars that helps to fund the academic year in which revenue barely covers expenses. Specifically non New School summer students from other universities doing internships in New York City needing housing, our biggest customer base by far over the summer. Because they are not our students directly, we knew little about this population. This helped guide my further research.

There were other insights gleaned from analytic review that I shared with the housing team, including the high frequency of access of floor plan PDFs, recommending to them improving / making more accessible the floor plans. Also I noted for the social media team that many visitors came to us through Facebook, adding support to their efforts there.

Based on this information, I planned a two part course of research with our non New School "intern" summer housing customers including a survey & a usability test.

SURVEY: I created a survey for customers including both quantitative and qualitative questions.
- Asked how they found out about summer housing, finding 51% through friend, 27% through internet. I recommended to my team that we should add friend referral program to capitalize on the first statistic.
- I also found that 71 % visited the site before deciding to come to our housing
- I asked them what they were looking for on our site: it was mostly location, pricing, amenities, check in / check out dates, & floor plans
- 57% found site moderately useful
- Analysis of open-ended responses showed that people wanted more pictures, more specifics about what’s in the kitchens, & more details about the guest policy.
- People most frequently mentioned NYU as another option they considered
USABILITY Test: I created a usability test for (non New School) summer housing customers. It involved us pulling up the site together and having them complete the task of finding the application for housing. I trained an assistant to help with this.
- Everyone of the 10 customers found the application, but they commonly said it could be easier and more direct to get to. There was a lot of scrolling involved.
- All said they initially found what they were looking for, but were expecting to find more information including pictures.
- We found that the section for current students seeking summer housing was higher up on the page but it was summer interns (non New School students) who use the site the most. My recommendation was that the sections be reversed and that the summer intern section be more prominent.

Later I was asked by my team to help with redesigning the entire site. I suggested getting a sense of students’ mental models for how to organize the information on the site. To this end, I conducted an open card sort using OptimaSort (matrix featured below).

I Worked with ten students, they divided up sections into 5-6 categories on average
Floor plans & Tour schedule grouped 90% of the time
Applying to be an RA & Hall Council grouped 80 % of time
Apply for fall housing & summer housing grouped 80% of time
Apply for summer housing & summer housing for current students grouped 80% of time
Broad categories:
- Get involved: apply to be an RA / Hall Council
- About us: contacting housing / our values / staff
- New to The New School?: how to apply / tour schedule / important dates / res hall information / floor plans / rates / meal plans / gender inclusive agreements

Along the way I checked in with the team about my insights and recommendations, and at the end I presented all information to the decision makers in the department in the form of a report that I presented. This information was shared with the marketing department to change aspects of the site, including making the application button easier to find as well as making the summer intern section more accessible than it currently was. The information I shared also informed the proper times of the year to make website changes based on analytics and more guidance in what customers are looking for when they come to our site.

The information has not yet been acted on because of a leadership change and COVID related issues. But I recently pressed again for site changes, particularly to the summer housing section and the committee is reconvening in Fall 2020.

More User Research