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Three women in business attire walking together on a brick pathway on the Goizueta campus outside a large white office building with tall windows and greenery in the background.

Goizueta Business School

An enhanced user experience for one of the world's leading business schools

Improving user journeys and brand expression

Goizueta Business School is Emory University’s private business school. Consistently ranked among the top 20 business schools by U.S. News & World Report, Goizueta has been offering a world-class education to tomorrow’s business leaders for over 100 years. 

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With such a sterling reputation, Goizueta relies on branding that communicates their prestige and unique approach to business education. In 2024, Goizeuta’s team wanted to refresh their website in line with their modernized brand expression, as well as UX and performance enhancements.

They chose to partner with Palantir.net for our iterative approach. We delivered the most critical components and improved information architecture and page load times. We also worked closely with Goizueta’s internal team so they could continue modernizing and improving their offerings after project completion. 
 

I've led several website redesigns and major updates throughout my career, and my experience working with Palantir has been the smoothest and most enjoyable, by far.

Nicole Hitpas, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Goizueta Business School

An injection of expertise to support existing branding efforts

Following a major website redesign and CMS migration in 2018-19, Goizueta’s internal team had been making small updates to the site to keep pace with their evolving brand expression and user needs. Over time a growing number of inconsistencies and redundant code piled up. When it came to modernization, what Goizueta wanted was consistency, polish and a streamlined user experience, so they decided to partner with external consultants to revamp their design from code to color choice.

Goizueta wasn’t starting from scratch: they had a maintained style guide, a strong technical foundation, and vivid imagery at their disposal. They wanted their external partners to harness these assets in the brand refresh and leave their internal team in the optimal position to continue independently refining once the project wrapped up.

The project timeline was tight. From an October start date, Goizeuta wanted new assets live and new processes handed back to their internal team by the following spring. The project would require a strategic approach: audit the current offering, identify the most-used components, design, refine, and optimize—then implement, fast. Close collaboration between the internal and external teams was going to be crucial for a smooth handover, to make sure the internal marketers and developers could keep iterating on the site as needed.

They decided to leverage Palantir’s modernization and UX services to deliver a sleek, user-centric design refresh mirroring their brand identity. 

Identifying key user journeys and components for maximum impact

With several different focus areas and a short timeframe, we agreed with Goizueta to prioritize selective enhancements with the greatest impact. We conducted audits and stakeholder interviews and used the results to select the key components and user journeys for the remainder of the project.

Empowering the internal team to take over was always paramount. We conducted weekly collaborative working sessions and worked in iterative agile sprints to stay in close contact with Goizueta’s developers and marketers. This gave them a high level of oversight into our working processes and recommendations, and allowed us to flag and hand over lower-priority tasks they could take over after the initial project wrap-up.  

  • Recommended and implemented accessibility improvements based on manual audit of the current site—and implemented suggested changes to code, visual elements, and content.
  • Worked with and updated Goizeuta’s internal style guide—working from pre-existing base styles, we suggested improvements to color palette, typography, and global component designs such as forms and buttons.
  • Developed new reusable site components and a user-validated mega menu to improve the site’s navigation, look, and feel.
  • Undertook and recommended DevOps hygiene tasks, such as removing redundant tooling and reconfiguring the search setup, to improve search functionality and site performance.
Goizueta Executive Education page highlighting organizational solution

[Palantir’s] team is collaborative, highly professional, and truly understands how to balance technical expertise with user-centered design. I would gladly work with them again, and recommend them without hesitation.

Nicole Hitpas, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Goizueta Business School

Delivering performant, accessible design

Following usability and performance testing, the new site went live in April of the following year. The new design offered a sleek, fresh enhancement to Goizueta’s site, while improvements to asset transparency, font choices, and colors offered a more accessible and navigable experience to all visitors.

New and improved navigation elements spotlighted the information most critical for the prospective student user journey—this included highlighting third-level menu items and key improvements to the positioning and style of the “Apply now” pathway. Our recommendations to Goizueta’s internal team led to a 15% improvement in load times across the site and test-verified improvements to search results. 

Goizueta Business School degree programs menu with MBA, master’s, BBA, and PhD options

A seamless handover for sustainable success

Following the launch, we focused on hotfixes and handing over resources and recommendations to Goizueta’s internal team. They’re now in a prime position to continue maintaining and improving the site and ensure sleek, consistent branding well into the future.

Whether you’re looking for a full rebuild or a strategic infusion of expert design and development skills, we can help bring your modernization to fruition—learn more about our modernization services today. 

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