Anatomy of a redesign: Inside Oregon State University’s online program page transformation

Oregon State University delivers more than 125 degrees, certificates and microcredentials online to learners in all 50 states and more than 50 countries. In 2024, the Oregon State Ecampus marketing and communications team began revising and reorganizing program-page content. The team moved from a multipage microsite to a focused, single-page format to better meet prospective students’ needs.

In this session, we’ll outline the assessment process and share the insights that guided this transition, including extensive UX considerations, SEO knowledge and user testing. Moving to a single-page format led to notable changes in our content strategy:

• A more intentional SEO approach.
• A template-based content structure.
• Shorter word counts.
• Clearer messaging.
• Selective use of AI tools.

These changes have been a net positive, but they have also introduced challenges. For example, writing to a shorter word count and using approachable language to meet SEO goals created tension between marketing and technical teams. Oregon State offers many technical degrees, including programs in engineering and agriculture.

We’ll share how our team responded, including how we use AI tools to decode dense language.

This session will include detailed before-and-after examples and practical strategies any marketing team can use to write and design program pages for modern reading and web-use habits.