Make Possible - the campaign for Carnegie Mellon University

CMU needed a capital campaign site as innovative as they are

Carnegie Mellon is at the vanguard of technological innovation and the nexus of Science and the Arts. They needed a site the reflected that unique position. Their logic was indisputable: “how can we claim to be bleeding edge if our website isn’t”. And so we were tasked with making their site quietly communicate that marriage of art and technology that their supporters see as the core of who they are.

Services Delivered

  • UI/UX Design
  • Content Strategy & Architecture
  • Branding & Visual Design
  • SPA Site Framework
  • Digital Animation
  • WCAG 2.1 AA ADA compliance
  • Customized WordPress CMS
  • SEO Optimization

”Finding a cause that resonates should also be fun.”

That is the belief of the campaign chair, so we, in collaboration with their Advancement team, created a fun, interactive and immersive landing page that introduces the core aspirations of the campaign and allows users to interact with them in a way that surprises and delights. Featuring custom animated illustrations showcasing their goals, the page is designed for engagement. The inside pages of the site coordinate and build on that theme of personalization and play.

We paid attention to the space between the pages.

Most websites think of themselves as a series of individual pages but, we spent extra time crafting the screen transitions between the pages to be seamless and fluid to maintain a sense of place, as if the relevant information is coming to you instead of being navigated to.

The Results

In its inaugural month, the site welcomed over 3.4k unique visitors with an incredible session duration of over 6 minutes and an exceptionally low bounce rate. The extra time we took optimizing for organic search accounts for over 32% of site traffic and our WCAG 2.1 AA level accessibility code standards ensures that the largest number of people possible can access the site.

Launch Website

If there’s one word I would use to describe the Durkan Group team, it is “unflappable.” Over the course of a year, they did a fantastic job juggling design, technical challenges and multiple rounds of feedback from many levels of university leadership as we prepared to launch a major fundraising campaign website and internal app. They came up with innovative solutions in a very collaborative and responsive way no matter what we threw at them. Their levelheadedness, we’ll-get-it-done mentality and willingness to explain things during my luddite moments has been very much appreciated. The web site and app were the parts of this campaign launch that we never had to worry about as we knew they were in good hands with Durkan.

Senior Associate Director, Advancement Communications Joyce DeFrancesco

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