Henley Business School
Henley was the first business school established in the UK, with the ambition to empower individuals to become great professionals and outstanding business leaders. 75 years down the line, they remain one of the oldest and most respected schools in Europe.
“We have worked with Kind over a number of projects recently from a full re-design of the Henley Business School website UI to smaller themed microsites, and have found them to be professional, engaging and efficient.”
The Challenge
When Henley needed a new website to present them as a truly innovative international business school, and better serve the needs of their diverse audience base, we were more than happy to help.
What we eventually delivered was not only a clean interface to house practical information, but also an accessible style guide that will continue to inform Henley’s online brand presence going forward.
Strategic Thinking
Audience
The website needed to talk to a variety of audiences including UK and International students, parents and agents. All with differing needs and motivations, along with varying familiarity with the Henley brand.
Insight
When digging deeper into the business education market, we found that the 3 factors with the biggest impact on user experience that needed addressing were search effectiveness, quality of navigation and speed of site.
Engagement
A fresh look & feel along with a ‘touch friendly’ interface would give Henley the opportunity to engage with their audiences regardless of their device. Re-thinking the content structure would also create a more intuitive and easy to use site.
Delivery
IA & User Experience
We simplified the navigation to include five simple and community-based items: Study & Life, Research & Faculty, Alumni, International, and About with a strong focus on search.
The goal was to let users discover the benefits of what Henley has to offer, while making it easy to find what they are looking for through logical navigation and easy to digest content pages.
Responsive ‘mobile-friendly’ design
Given Henley’s strong brand identity and established heritage, we needed to find the right balance between modern and classic design. We delivered a clean and contemporary interface, which is fully responsive, offers the user the best experience possible on any device and presents Henley as an innovative international business school.
Modular development
To implement the new design, we developed a modular front-end framework that focused on maintainability, accessibility and performance. From the outset we worked closely with the Henley internal team that would be taking care of integration with Henley’s bespoke CMS.
Handover
We provided extensive training, handovers, and support that both equipped the Henley team with the tools they needed to take the website forward over time, and also ensured that the intent of the new design was carried throughout the finished site.
