Web Design, Branding System, Content Strategy

“Offline, our world at UMD is perfect. Online? Not so much.”

THE STORY
Fr. Mike Schmitz is one righteous dude. On the weekends, he travels the country speaking at conferences. Then during the school week he’s storming the sidewalks meeting new students at the University of Minnesota Duluth in Minnesota. (Think: crunchy college town on Lake Superior.) Because of his personality and commitment, he’s built a vibrant Catholic community at their Newman center on campus.

THE PROBLEM
Their website was boring and boring. Their logo was confusing.

THE SOLUTION
A new branding system, a new website. The branding had to look at home in two distinct settings: the Catholic church and the University of Minnesota Duluth. Plus branding had to student-facing sidecar brand “bulldogCatholic.”

Then we built a new website with lots of versatility. It offers up quick, accurate information for students about the weekly events on campus. Plus, it showcases great blogs, audio content, and downloadable resources for students and for netizens who stumble upon the site. Most importantly, the website must change frequently as the school year progresses.

THE RESULTS
Within 1 year of our website overhaul, the website’s numbers exploded from less than 300 visits / month to 4,583 / month. Here are the numbers for the year 2015:

Unique Visitors: 55,000
Pages viewed: 257,450
On Screen Podcast Listens: 19,300
Average plays per video: 58