University College of Northern Denmark (UCN)

Digital platform for choosing education

UCN is one of the largest educational institutions in Denmark, offering both academy profession and professional bachelor's degree programs, vocational education, and top-up degree programs. Every day, 9400 students and course participants step inside one of UCN's 6 locations in Aalborg, Hjørring, and Thisted.

December 2022

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The website has three main business objectives

Attract students
Sell courses and extra education
Profile UCN as an attractive collaboration partner

From chaos to tender

The website is a central tool in the recruitment efforts towards potential students and course participants, and it plays a key role as an information and dissemination channel, functioning as the primary digital showcase for UCN.

The old platform had been developed over several years and had therefore become complex to further develop and difficult for editors to update regarding education and courses. Statistics also showed that users did not find the important overview of educational modules and courses.

UCN therefore chose to offer the website in a public tender, which Kruso won.

Improved user journey

The starting point for the solution is based on the user journeys of potential new students. The website is a communication platform, and it should work together with other channels to attract students to study at UCN. The design of the solution has been developed in close dialogue with UCN's design responsible.

The website and its design are built up of content components according to the "Atomic design" principles, where each element is designed separately. The elements can be combined into unique page views and still appear as a cohesive design. The components are designed responsively, so they fit together, both on mobile and desktop. Components can be combined in countless ways, so the experience of the website is both varied and consistent in its expression.

The UX work focused on creating a good overview – both of the number of courses and offerings, and an overview of the content of each education program.

To make it easier for users to get an overview, we built a favorites list into the solution. The favorites list is a collection of the courses the user is considering before making a decision. The list works without the users needing to log in. In this way, we ensure a frictionless user experience.

For courses, the registration for the course is also integrated into the course description, so the user can sign up immediately.

Focus on digital visibility - search engine optimization

The website is created with the users in mind. The solution is optimized to create attractive posts on social media and to be easily decipherable by Google and other search engines. Thus, the website captures users early in their considerations.

The website has several features to optimize SEO and digital visibility: Editors can tailor texts for both search engines and social media, so each page sells itself as best as possible. Additionally, microformats are used for events and news. Microformats are a structured way to tell search engines and other robots what the page contains.

The website addresses both Danish and foreign students in Danish and English, and the system is built so that each page can have a Danish and an English version.

Aligned implementation

UCN today stands with a modern and strong communication platform, built on Umbraco CMS and hosted in Azure. Umbraco is known as a very editor-friendly CMS, and it's easy to create varied page layouts while still being consistent with UCN's design guide.

Hosting in Azure ensures a very stable and secure operation, which can be scaled if needed.

Prospective students and their parents can easily find relevant education and courses through intuitive search functions. Additionally, contact information for employees is always up to date via integration with UCN's core systems.

The solution was launched in December 2022 and has since been expanded with more campaign sites and a website for UCN's library.