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Experience Program

Working with units across campus to create efficient and effective digital pathways to success for MSU audiences

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Experience Program

The Digital Experience Program at Michigan State University was created to ensure that visitors to MSU’s digital properties receive a cohesive branded experience that allows them to easily fulfill their needs, while also addressing university and unit business needs. The program unites audience insights, user research and optimization learnings, with communications and marketing strategy and cutting-edge technology systems. 

The foundational technologies for this program are: Sitecore XM Cloud (website content management system, or CMS), Sprinklr (social media management) and GA4/Google Tag Manager (analytics).

Improve the Digital Experience for Key Audiences

University Communications and Marketing’s goal is to help units provide a quality, seamless, branded digital experience for prospective students, current students and alumni. 

  • Extensive research, journey mapping, user testing and focus groups with audience members informed how University Communications and Marketing shaped digital experience strategy and website designs for Sitecore.
  • Comparative audits, competitive research and focus groups with representatives from various campus units and colleges informed the approach to site information architecture and layouts.
  • Frequent audience-based user testing allows for iteration and improvement.
  • A combination of qualitative and quantitative data sources informs the process throughout implementation and after launch.
  • Testing and iterative improvements are used to optimize the audience experience over time, with the objective of helping unit sites to improve performance and drive university and unit business goals.
  • Learnings are disseminated to platform users so units can benefit from the knowledge gained and put them into action on their own websites and social media accounts.
  • University Communications and Marketing may advise and consult with units on improvements that can be made to their site to enhance the audience journey for prospective students, current students and alumni.
  • A campuswide approach to the audience experience allows us to focus on meeting the needs of key strategic audiences (prospective students, current students and alumni) to support university and unit business goals.
  • Visitors will intuitively understand how to navigate the unit’s website because the experience is similar across all participating MSU websites. This reduces frustration in the audience experience and helps visitors achieve their goals efficiently. 
  • Using global components and the global data structure will allow for sharing content across sites, such as between unit sites and (in the future) to MSUToday and events.msu.edu.
  • All components and templates are designed to meet university brand standards. Websites benefit from sharing the look and feel of a university website, while still having the ability to customize content for a unit’s needs and personality. 
  • All Sitecore components are rigorously tested to meet accessibility standard requirements from a technical standpoint. Units just need to worry about the accessibility of their own website content. 
  • The university privacy policy language has been updated to ensure it addresses all the technology that serves as part of the digital experience program. 

Enable Communicators and Marketers to Focus on Content and Marketing

  • University Communications and Marketing and MSU IT centrally manage the technology and systems, so units don’t have to deal with it. Users can focus on telling MSU’s best stories and driving the unit’s marketing and communications goals. 
  • Audience members who can find the information they need easily on a website may have an overall better experience and may less often resort to calling or emailing staff with questions. Less interruptions in a workday? Sounds good to us!
  • A unit’s content can become part of a university-wide content ecosystem, helping to spread awareness of unit news and events (if the unit wants). 
  • University Communications and Marketing can empower the ability to share a unit’s content across sites (i.e., department to college and college to department) without having to recreate it for each site, making cross-promotion more efficient.
  • The university global taxonomy makes it easier for audiences to find stories and events that interest them and makes it easier for units to connect related content. It also strengthens the power of web search. 
  • Content can be used to offer personalized experiences to website visitors. The content ecosystem structure and the global taxonomy make personalization processes more efficient and effective. 
  • Website templates, website section templates, page templates, page section templates and component blocks make building pages and websites simple.
  • More advanced technical users can utilize Sitecore Explorer and Content Editor to do even more with the CMS technology.
  • Global Sitecore content components, such as MSU pride points can be managed in one spot. No more worrying if you remembered to update a fact on every page where that content is placed. 
  • University Communications and Marketing sets up the unit’s GA4 analytics, or Google Analytics, and container in Google Tag Manager, if necessary. The team can also work with existing setups. 
  • University Communications and Marketing sets up basic tagging required for reporting and provide resources for users to learn more about using Google Analytics on their own.
  • Sprinklr users receive access to robust social media channel analytics tools, widgets and dashboards. Take things further with customized metadata tracking fields to measure content performance across channel and campaigns. 
  • The university pays the enterprise costs associated with setting up and maintaining the systems.
  • Units pay for custom Sitecore development work that does not serve a broader university need or is needed on a timeframe that falls outside the set platform roadmap. 
  • Units may choose to work with MSU’s partner agency, RDA, on website projects in Sitecore. Costs are flexible depending on the size of the website and the scope of the work involved. Units work with University Communications and Marketing and RDA to determine a scope of work that meets unit needs and budgets.
    • For example, a unit might have RDA do discovery research, site design and planning, page scaffolding and content migration. Alternatively, the unit might opt to take the “blueprints” RDA generates as the site design and then handle the “build,” i.e., page scaffolding and content migration, on their own to keep costs low. See “Website Project Process” for additional details on project elements.
  • Units pay for individual seats in Sprinklr, connected to MSU Net IDs. Each seat can manage as many social media channels and accounts as necessary, but can only be connected to an individual Net ID. 
  • University Communications and Marketing does the work of building the unit’s Sitecore and Sprinklr user environments and training unit staff, allowing users to focus on content and strategy. 
  • Access a full suite of documentation and best practice resources for marketing technology platforms, including Sitecore and Sprinklr. 
  • Submit suggestions and ideas for improving and enhancing MSU’s marketing technology. This is a collective program and University Communications and Marketing is co-building it with MSU IT and units across campus to serve MSU’s collective needs. All ideas are open to consideration for addition to the roadmap.
  • Benefit from shared knowledge and learnings from other program members and platform users at Michigan State University. Crowdsourcing knowledge and experience will help everyone to improve.

A Carefully Crafted Digital Experience Has Real Impact

+20%

Annual Website Traffic

Increased year over year on Admissions' Virtual Tour website with site optimizations

2X

Completed Admission RFI forms

Using new optimized campaign landing pages

+44%

Increased  website crawlability

Leading to improved search result rankings for the College of Engineering

55%

Website carbon footprint improvement

For the College of Engineering, according to WebsiteCarbon.com

2X

Improvement in Site Health Scores

For the College of Engineering website using SEMRUSH data

60%

Projected savings in development project costs

For the College of Education website redesign

5-25%

Increase in Story Read Goal conversions

Resulting from MSUToday story page optimizations

100+

Sprinklr custom data fields

Enabling enhanced measurement and analysis of social media

Website Project Process Overview

The website project framework, developed by University Communications and Marketing, provides an overview of general project stages and a comprehensive list of required and optional tasks associated with a website project. 

Get started
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Two individuals stand in front of a white board. The whiteboard is covered with sticky notes labeled with marketing terms and wireframe mockups for a website.

Working with a Vendor

MSU has partnered with a Sitecore development agency to assist in designing and launching websites. Units can hire the agency to assist with projects of varying sizes, at the unit’s expense. University Communications and Marketing coordinates the Procurement process. 

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Request a Consultation

Units exploring new marketing technology or looking for a technology solution for a business challenge can request consultation with the Digital Experience Program. A member of the University Communications and Marketing team will meet with staff to discuss the unit’s business needs. University Communications and Marketing can recommend appropriate solutions from the MSU enterprise marketing technology stack and make suggestions for content and platform strategy. 

Email a request
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Glossary

Marketing technology comes with its own language. This reference guide can explain unfamiliar terminology.

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Taxonomy Data Dictionary

MSU’s systems use standardized taxonomies for various metadata fields. This guide includes the standard taxonomies and available fields and explains the importance of standardizing taxonomies to website visitors and for analytics.

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