Higher Education Website Redesign for Lifelong Learning
Helping learners and organizations find their next step
Project6 redesigned and rebuilt Sacramento State’s College of Continuing Education (CCE) website, moving from Drupal to WordPress and creating clear paths through its educational programs and organizational services. A searchable program finder, focused navigation, and reorganized content help visitors explore opportunities that match their goals.
CCE serves people at many stages of life, from students completing a degree to professionals building new skills. It also partners with organizations on workforce training, organizational development, and event planning. The website needed to make that full range of work understandable and easy to explore.
A broad offering without clear paths
CCE’s previous Drupal website had grown crowded and difficult to navigate. Prospective learners encountered information intended for current students, while services for organizations received less visibility. Visitors needed clearer ways to find relevant offerings and understand their options.
The challenge was to serve both audiences within one cohesive website, giving each a clear starting point and useful next steps. For learners, that meant making practical program information easier to find. For organizations, it meant bringing CCE’s services and partnership opportunities into focus.
Organized around what visitors need
Project6 worked with CCE to define the content hierarchy, information architecture, and wireframes before moving into design and development. The new structure gives Programs & Courses, Organizational Services, and Learner Services distinct places within a consistent experience.
A searchable, filterable program finder helps visitors explore options by area of study, program type, learning format, and credit type. Listings bring estimated cost and duration into view, helping learners assess their options before contacting CCE.
Dedicated organizational services pages explain CCE’s capabilities and invite prospective partners to connect. A separate Learner Services section brings registration, records, financial aid, and other resources together, giving current learners a clear destination.
Our WordPress development brought program discovery, organizational services, and learner support together within a unified design, replacing CCE’s previous Drupal website.
Clearer paths. Stronger search performance.
The redesigned website gives CCE’s audiences clear places to begin: exploring programs, accessing learner resources, or connecting about organizational services. Early post-launch reporting also shows gains in accessibility and organic search performance.
Google Search Console recorded more clicks despite fewer impressions, with a higher click-through rate. Alongside the improved average search position, these results show that CCE’s Google search appearances generated more visits during the reporting period.
For prospective learners, the experience continues with a searchable program finder that brings estimated cost, duration, and learning format into view. For organizations, dedicated service pages make CCE’s capabilities and partnership opportunities easier to explore.
In the first weeks after launch, Google Analytics and Search Console showed gains across traffic, rankings and engagement:
- Direct traffic up 14.5%, organic up 9% and referral up 4%
- Organic visitors staying 1m 20s on average, up from 1m 06s
- 3,194 keywords ranking 4 to 10 (+12%) and 1,721 ranking 11 to 20 (+1.8%)
- Non-branded searches ranking 14.6 on average, up from 17.0, with gains on “paramedic school,” “EMT certification,” “grant writing certification” and “college of continuing education”
