Hagerstown Community College
About Hagerstown Community College
Founded in 1946, Hagerstown Community College is Maryland’s first community college. Over the years, they have offered hundreds of affordable courses that not only educate, but also empower the local community. Ignition72 was selected to help HCC reinforce it’s brand and better communicate with all members of the community, from students, faculty, and staff, to even local stakeholders, all through a new more engaging website.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Learning + Planning
Planning employed our traditional Strategy First™ approach, with multiple in person meetings on campus to explore, understand and define the key variables for the new site, including clearer navigation, consolidated site/campus wide alert systems, and a new design that would better allow students and the community to see how HCC helps people improve their own stories.
Style Exploration
Since the HCC brand is mature and established, our design team worked closely with their communications team to best represent the brand. This was instrumental in the use of colors, fonts, and the visual assets, such as the home page video or the use of photography that appears throughout the site.
Design + Development
HCC accentuates and enriches the trajectories of the students that attend. It was important then, that the brand not be too heavy or overpowering. We wanted to help students see themselves on the pages of the website instead, whether they are full-time students, are attending continuing education classes, or even are part of the advanced high school student programs offered on campus.
Results
After launching in 2020, the new site on an average day assists over 3,500 visitors, with 12K page views, and each user spending 3 hours and 37 minutes on site. It is the central hub in the HCC digital landscape; connecting students to the library, faculty members to HR, teachers to the classrooms and much much more. The new site welcomes visitors using audience segmentation with rich video, a powerful search tool, and a navigation that encourages goal completion.