Counseling Services Website Redesign
User Experience and Website Redesign
Mental health challenges continue to rise among college students. The university's counseling department serves the entire Athens community but often receives requests that exceed their individual counseling capacity. While they offer workshops, group therapy, and mental health apps, their website created a significant communication barrier with poorly planned navigation, complex content, and unclear audience focus. I commissioned a user evaluation from the university's central web team, which guided my execution of a complete redesign of the department's primary digital touchpoint with students.
Desktop and mobile display of new counseling home page
New counseling home page, topic preview element featuring counseling locations on campus
Services web page, utilized icon links to feature various mental health services
Database of mental health resources
Strategy
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User Evaluation
Current students were identified as the primary audience. The evaluation focused on three objectives: can users navigate the site structure, do they understand the information provided, and how can the site better serve them?
The evaluation combined two user tests with Google Analytics data. Fifteen Ohio University students with an interest in mental health—half of whom had used campus counseling—completed open-ended questions and tasks. An open card sort with 49 current students had users create and name their own categories for individual topics. Analytics review identified the top 20 most visited pages and their engagement metrics.
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Web Strategy
The evaluation report's recommendations informed a new web and content strategy. Key recommendations included streamlining site structure and navigation for a student audience, reorganizing resources into four thematic pages, prominently featuring appointment scheduling on the home page with a dedicated instructional page, and revising home page tiles to reflect student needs.
Beyond these recommendations, our team redesigned the entire site from text-heavy pages to modular layouts with clear information hierarchy, helping students easily identify the information they need.
Creative
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Photo Style
Out of respect for client confidentiality the counseling department does not have photos of actual students engaged in their services. However, the new site’s visuals needed a human touch and this was achieved through use of stock imagery.
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Modular Pages
The previous site suffered from text heavy web pages that were difficult to easy navigate. Most of those pages were built as basic, text-only pages. With the new site, modular pages were built to allow for more visual contrast and variation in laying out content.
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Information Hierarchy
This project included restructuring and rewriting the original content to be more accessible. Knowing that users typically scan web pages for the information relevant to them, we made greater use of dynamic tools such as headings, collapsible sections, and topic previews.
Deployment
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Launch
The site was launched in January 2022.
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Newsletter
The site launch was featured in the student newsletter, which featured upgrades designed to improve access to mental health services.
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Social Media
In addition to features in the newsletter, the campaign included social media support.
Role Call
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User evaluation and recommendations by Kailee Slusser. Development of site hierarchy and navigation by Erika Clusman and Mitzi Trentacoste. Content strategy, editing, graphics and page layout by Erika Clusman.
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Ohio University, Division of Student Affairs, Counseling and Psychological Services