SOAS University of London

London's Top University for Teaching

SOAS has a proud and important role in the higher education sector. Known for it’s diversity in subject matter, and student bodies – SOAS University of London is uniquely positioned to offer students a truly global focus on studies and career opportunities.

Increased Email conversion rate

10%

Increased engagement on mobiles

40%

Improved SEO and lead conversions

30%

We where hired to:

Manage and improve student admissions and conversions, by leading and improving the digital strategy.
Lead on email marketing, SEO, Google Display advertising and other PPC campaigns.
Develop a WordPress blog site to increase SEO and targeted traffic
Redesign and Optimise Email Campaign for mobile devices

Color & material

We worked with the SOAS corporate colour palette, tying it closely to the corporate website. However we went with a new shade of blue as the accent colour to give the site a more modern and distinctive theme. The font we chose followed news sites such as The Guardian and BBC, however we opted to use a San-Serif font to keep the feel modern.

Washed Blue

#417e94

Magenta Magma

#c62a41

Jaded Earth

#2f3530

Exo Bold

Aa

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Exo Regular

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Philosopher Regular

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Designed for Search Engine Optimisation

Real time reporting and content ranking scores, allows editors to place keywords, descriptions and more, easily on every article. Scores also factor in readability, sentence length as well as keyword positioning to ensure that search engines find the content as relevant as possible.

Category driven UX

The website dynamically pulls and places information into specific areas based on the subject of the article. This is great for visitors who are interesting in browsing specific areas of study, which in turn creates longer session times on site.

Easy to create Rich Content

Videos, galleries, forms and even quizzes are easy to create and edit. All on brand and automatically scaled for any device. Content is presented in engaging and immersive ways, presenting users with highly-shareable content.

Our impact

Over the course of 12 months, we were able to build and deliver some key technical achievements. Here are some of our favourites.

Integration with YouTube API

The site displays in full width for sliders, on a grid of 1280 and 960px for desktops, and scales under 490px for mobiles. All sidebars, widgets, carousels are also scaled, or disabled according to the UI plan.

Deploy

The integration with YouTube allows the carousel and hero items to pull directly from a channel or playlist. All comments and likes on YouTube can also be used. This was achieved through PHP and Google’s Developer console.

Category and taxonomy driven sliders

The main carousel automatically pulls from tailored blog posts from certain categories and taxonomies, such as post date and popularity. It will therefor priorities articles which have comments or are new. It automatically pulls the featured image as well as the excerpt.

Integration with Facebook API

The Facebook Integration allows visitors to create accounts using their Facebook information, and can also be used on mobiles without opening a browser. It will automatically pull the profile picture and basic information, which doesn’t require additional permissions from the user or review by Facebook. User information is also collected and stored in an XML which can easily be imported into email campaigns or bespoke CMS systems

Beautiful and functional on every device

The website is made for all devices, automatically scaling banners, images, news articles and events calendars. The website also streamlines loading time on mobile devices, ensuring that browsing on the go is quick and easy.

Engaging hero articles
User commenting and sharing
Powerful upcoming events calendar
Intuitive menus and related news articles
Student recruitment call-to-actions

Integration with Twitter API

Integrated with the Twitter API services, to deliver real-time tweets, posts and statistics. This allows SOAS to show Twitter activity with each subject area and school.

Integration with Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Retargeting

Integrated the Universal Analytics Java Script on all pages, within the header. This allows SOAS to integrate the website with Tag Manger, Google Data Studio and more. Making it easier to inform key decisions when running PPC and Social media campaigns.

Available Globally

This allows users to write articles, add to forums, comment on articles and be notified when there has been activity on their own posts. More importantly, it can also be extended to eCommerce Functions, such as purchase history, transactions and more.

Custom widgets and sidebars for specific page templates

Page templates will have their own sidebars and widgets which priorities content tailored to that user journey. This includes, account creations, social media information, related articles and posts, and upcoming events.