Our higher education clients include:

Our higher education industry solutions.

User Research

Higher Education Discovery & Strategy

Through stakeholder discovery sessions, we’ll work to quickly get up to speed on your business objectives, audience needs, and internal priorities.

Using data from external focus groups and surveys, we’ll deliver a holistic strategy based on helping you improve user experiences and achieve your objectives.

  • Discovery & Strategy
  • User Experience (UX) Research & Validation
  • Design
  • Stakeholder Interviews
  • Audience Focus Groups, Surveys
  • Content Migration
     

Higher Education Website Development

Our team will create intuitive digital experiences that represent your institution’s brand and provide seamless user experiences for prospective students.

We achieve this by leveraging platforms such as Drupal and WordPress or through a custom solution, using hosting partners like Acquia and Pantheon, or employing on-premises hosting solutions.

  • Platform Migrations
  • UX & User Interface (UI) Design
  • Back-end & Front-end Development
  • Information Architecture & Search
  • Complex Integrations
     
Website QA Testing & Training
Ad Management & Optimization

Higher Education Digital Marketing

Our team of performance marketing specialists understands how to leverage paid and owned channels to capture the attention of prospective students and support their entire student journey.

  • Paid Media Management
  • Performance Creative Design
  • Email & CRM Automation
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Analytics & Data Performance
     

Digital Accessibility

Embracing universal accessibility improves experiences for every user.

It’s more than just checking a compliance box — accessible websites allow broader audiences at every language level to navigate your website while improving search and mobile functionality.

  • Manual and Automated Accessibility Scans & Audits
  • Accessible-first Web Design & Development
  • Accessibility Remediation
Digital Accessibility
Hosting & DevOps

Ongoing Support

The Northern team offers support and training to our clients and their teams to ensure that they are equipped for success. 

  • Ongoing Web Development Support & Maintenance
  • SEO Training & Writing for the Web

Higher Education Case Studies

Bothell How we Did It
How Northern Simplified UW Bothell's Digital Presence

The University of Washington Bothell faced consistency and workflow challenges due to its expansive website. 

The team’s combined efforts resulted in a streamlined website migration to WordPress and the creation of over 50 subsites for targeted content management, enhancing UW Bothell's digital presence and user experiences for students and employees alike.

University of Virginia website on laptop
University of Virginia, Integrated Digital Experience

This project included upgrading twenty Drupal 7 websites to Drupal 8 Site Factory and 68 legacy site replacements through content amalgamation or deprecation.

  • 2020 Winner of WebAward for Standard of Excellence
  • 20 Websites created in less than an hour
  • 68 Websites replaced via content amalgamation
Screenshot of mobile device.
Canisius University Drupal 9 Migration

It was important for Canisius University to create a platform that stood out amongst its competitors with unparalleled user experience for its primary audience, prospective students. 


Northern implemented custom reporting and site tracking through Google Tag Manager and Analytics 4. The new digital experience prioritizes search functionality, intuitive navigation, and mobile optimization.