Project Digicomm

About the Project

Bryn Mawr College engaged Higher Digital to support Phases One and Two of its Digital Communications Ecosystem Redevelopment project, known as Project Digicomm.

Led by the Office of Communications and Marketing, Project Digicomm is a multi-phase digital communications strategy initiative focused on strengthening the College’s digital ecosystem. The project explores how Bryn Mawr’s websites, platforms, and digital communications can be clearer, easier to navigate, more sustainable to maintain, and better aligned with the needs of key audiences.

Through research, benchmarking, platform evaluation, website analysis, and stakeholder engagement, Project Digicomm has identified opportunities to improve how students, families, faculty, staff, alumnae/i, and other audiences find, understand, and act on information online.

The goal is not to redesign every page at once. Instead, Project Digicomm recommends a phased and manageable approach that improves high-value user journeys first, strengthens the foundation of the current website, and creates reusable structures that can scale over time.

Project Goals

Project Digicomm was designed to help Bryn Mawr:

Improve the usability and clarity of the College’s digital communications.
Make it easier for key audiences to find and understand information.
Strengthen navigation, content structure, search visibility, readability, and user flow.
Clarify what information belongs on the public website and what may be better served through internal digital tools, such as an app or portal.
Better align external-facing marketing and storytelling content with the needs of prospective students, families, alumnae/i, and other public audiences.
Better align internal operational information with the needs of current students, faculty, and staff.
Clarify how different digital platforms should work together to support different audience needs.
Support more consistent content governance, ownership, review practices, standards, and workflows.
Create a more sustainable approach to maintaining the College’s website over time.
Use research, analytics, and audience needs to guide digital decisions.

Phase I focused on understanding the current state of Bryn Mawr’s digital communications ecosystem.

This work included reviewing the College’s website structure, content, governance practices, digital platforms, and audience needs. It helped identify opportunities to make the website clearer, more useful, and easier to maintain.

Phase I created the foundation for a broader evaluation of how Bryn Mawr’s digital ecosystem can better support both external and internal audiences.

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August - September 2025

Audit the current digital communications ecosystem and cross-campus data products to establish a comprehensive and authoritative baseline.

✅ Key Stakeholder Interviews
✅ Student, Faculty, and Staff Focus Groups
✅ Campus Community Survey
✅ Technical Audit

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

October 2025 - November 2025

Benchmark peer institutions and industry solutions to identify functional, experience, and technical gaps.

October - November 2025

✅ EDUCASE Peer Data Analysis
✅ Peer Institution Interviews
✅ Industry Research
✅ Functional, Experience, and Technical Gaps Identified

October - November 2025
Articulate a target-state architecture for a unified mobile-app + portal, a marketing-focused public website, and atomized content management across platforms.

✅ Internal Platform Evaluation Matrix
✅ Website Traffic & Email Marketing Analysis
✅ Digital Communications and Content Effectiveness Report

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

December 2025

Produce a phased implementation roadmap that sequences future workstreams—content strategy, workflow redesign, platform adoption, integrations—along with high-level timelines and decision points.

✅ Year One Project Budget Estimate
✅ Multi-Year Digital Communications Roadmap
✅ Resource Model & Timeline

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

Phase II is now complete.

This phase built on the discovery work from Phase I through deeper research, benchmarking, and analysis. It included industry research, internal platform evaluation, website traffic and email marketing analysis, digital communications and content effectiveness review, identification of functional, technical, content, and user experience gaps, and development of recommendations for future improvements.

The Phase II recommendations provide a strategic framework for improving Bryn Mawr’s website and digital communications in a phased, coordinated, and sustainable way.

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April - May 2026

April - May 2026

✅ MVP Website Content Rewrite
✅ MVP Website Information Architecture
✅ MVP Website Navigation Restructuring
✅ Conceptual Page Layout Design

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

February - March 2026

February - March 2026

✅ Full Website Content Inventory
✅ Content Categorization (internal, external, retire)
✅ Peer Institution Marketing Website Audit
✅ External Persona Development
✅ Website Content Gap Assessment
✅ Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Definition
✅ MVP Website Content Rewrite

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

May - June 2026

May - June 2026

✅ Priority Page Content Development
✅ Internal Content Migration Planning
✅ Campus Visit and Final Phase II Presentation

✅ Completed 🟨 In Progress 🟥 Not Started

Key Findings and Recommendations

Clarify the role of the public website and internal digital tools

A major recommendation is to better align information with audience needs and platform purpose.

The public website should prioritize external-facing marketing, storytelling, admissions, academic, and institutional content. This includes content that helps prospective students and families discover Bryn Mawr, explore academic programs, understand the student experience, and take next steps such as applying, visiting, or requesting information.

Internal operational information — such as routine resources, task-based content, policies, and campus community information — may be better served through internal digital tools, such as an app or portal designed for current students, faculty, and staff.

This clearer segmentation can help make the public website easier to navigate, reduce duplication, and create more useful digital experiences for different audiences.

Improve high-value user journeys first

The recommendations support a pathway-first approach. This means focusing first on the user journeys that have the greatest impact, especially for prospective students and families.

Stronger pathways between academic programs, admissions, stories, outcomes, and student experience content can help users move through the site more easily and better understand the value of a Bryn Mawr education.

Stabilize and clean the existing website experience

Before larger structural changes begin, Bryn Mawr can improve usability and trust by addressing common sources of friction across the current site. Focus areas include:

Broken link remediation
Redirect cleanup
Removal of outdated or duplicate content
Navigation consistency improvements
Readability and heading updates
Metadata and page title cleanup
Improved visibility of key calls to action, such as Apply, Visit, and Request Information

These improvements can reduce friction quickly and create a stronger foundation for future work.

Strengthen content standards, templates, and governance

The recommendations also emphasize the need for clearer content ownership, refresh schedules, shared standards, templates, workflows, and regular review processes.

Strong governance helps ensure that website content remains accurate, relevant, accessible, and aligned with user needs over time. It also helps prevent content sprawl and reduces long-term maintenance burdens.

Recommended Rollout Approach

Project Digicomm recommends a phased, pathway-first implementation model rather than attempting to redesign all sections of the website simultaneously.

This approach allows Bryn Mawr to:

Prioritize the highest-impact user journeys first.
Reduce implementation complexity.
Improve consistency across pathways and content types.
Introduce scalable navigation and content systems.
Build reusable structures for future growth.
Support ongoing iteration and refinement over time.

The long-term goal is not simply to redesign pages, but to create a more connected digital ecosystem where navigation, storytelling, academics, admissions, outcomes, and internal resources work together to support users across the full Bryn Mawr experience.

What’s Next

The Phase II recommendations will support Bryn Mawr’s internal evaluation, prioritization, and decision-making through established governance processes.

Next steps include confirming priorities, identifying early implementation opportunities, and developing a manageable roadmap for future improvements. Early work is expected to focus on stabilizing the current website experience, improving high-value pathways, strengthening content standards, and continuing to clarify which information belongs on the public website and which content may be better served through internal digital tools.

As this work continues, the Office of Communications and Marketing will partner with campus stakeholders and web editors to improve priority areas of the website, support stronger content stewardship, and build a more sustainable digital communications ecosystem over time.