Transforming an Alumni Association’s Digital Presence

For over 150 years, the Cal Alumni Association (CAA) has supported and connected current students and alumni with each other and their alma mater, UC Berkeley. CAA’s commitment to serve its community translates into an array of programs, which were in need of an elevated digital space with a clear focus on user experience.

In addition to the traditional needs of an alumni association, like driving memberships and donations, CAA also oversees a summer camp, a travel business for alumni, and two substantial content streams in the form of its alumni publication, California magazine, and an alumni news content hub.

So, a new site would essentially need to combine four websites into one cohesive experience. To achieve this, C/A designed and developed an extensive library of modular components that could be mixed and matched depending on the CAA team’s content needs.

The Results

C/A deployed the new CAA website and achieved the association’s website goals:

• Increased user time on page sitewide
• Increased pages per session sitewide
• Decreased bounce rate on California magazine articles
• Increased goal conversions for membership, giving and trip/camp book­ings

We knew going into the CAA website redesign that the discovery phase would be crucial, given the association’s broad audience, diverse program offerings and unique needs. To get a complete picture, we analyzed past website performance, interviewed stakeholders, performed content audits, developed user stories and more. Following this extensive research period, we delivered a comprehensive website strategy detailing our findings and key takeaways, which set a solid foundation for the project, starting with the site map and wireframes.

The CAA website includes two separate content hubs — one for its alumni publication and the other for its alumni news. To give the CAA team a clear path forward for future content, C/A developed a content strategy that laid out the goals behind both of these content efforts. The strategy also informed how content would be organized throughout the website.

The key was establishing a design that could clearly illustrate the connection between CAA and its partner brands: California magazine, Cal Discoveries Travel and the Lair of the Golden Bear, all while creating a unifying theme and cohesive user experience. This made site navigation and clear calls-to-action essential to user flow.

The enhanced experience resulted in a 12% increase in the average number of sessions per user, showing that users visit the site more frequently for information. There also was a 5% increase in average pages per visit, as users were able to more easily navigate to other content that interested them.

— Sarah Juckniess, Senior Director, Marketing & Communications