In 2017, the NAFSA team was at a critical point in its website journey. They were looking to reorganize and unify their content, find a way to take their website maintenance in-house and to update the design to allow for more graphics and videos. On top of that, the platform that the website was on was being phased out, forcing NAFSA to select a new content management system (CMS).   

They knew they needed a knowledgeable and reliable partner to help them transition to a new platform and to create a system that could grow with them and take the next step in their digital journey. This is where Unleashed came in. 

One of the first things we did with NAFSA was to establish goals and set requirements for the new CMS. NAFSA was very transparent with the fact that they did not want to be forced to move quickly. Instead, they wanted to be strategic and thoughtful about this big decision.  

In turn, we presented NAFSA with all their options. We were honest with our recommendations and made sure that they had any of the information they needed to make the decisions that were right for them. Ultimately, we agreed that Drupal 8 was the best fit for them and would allow them the most flexibility moving forward. 

One of the key elements to helping NAFSA achieve their website goals was our extensive strategy work. We created user personas, user journey maps, a new content taxonomy, and content hierarchy recommendations. These were the backbone of design, content, and development decisions to ensure we were promoting the findability of content that was most important to a user and most effective at addressing the business needs.