Web design may not be the first thing that comes to mind when considering Rec Sports marketing, but anyone in the Marketing & Communications office will tell you—clicks drive everything. Social media, newsletters, campaigns, and blog posts all drive users back to the website, where fresh, visually appealing pages help them find the information they need to get engaged with Rec Sports facilities and program offerings.

Over the past few months, the Rec Sports website has undergone a complete overhaul of many pages, including the homepage, individual program and facility pages, and the About Us page. Siddant Singh, a website assistant for Rec Sports Marketing and Communications has played a large role in getting the site to where it is today.

 “The idea was to move to visual-friendly, more color-led section separators to define the hierarchy on the page,” Singh said. “We wanted to make the navigation simpler — whatever helps the user get the information they want as quickly as possible.”

The results were substantial. Organic search clicks increased by 31% compared to last year. Page users rose by 18%, and sessions increased by 36%—almost 70,000 more than last year. New users and page views also increased by 17% and 24%, respectively.

“The ultimate goal is to increase traffic to the Rec Center and all its related facilities,” Singh said.

At the end of the day, improvements in website metrics benefit patrons, individual program areas, student employees, and Rec Sports as a whole. With this year’s strong growth, Marketing & Communications plans to keep the momentum going — creating an online space where users can continue to find information in new and engaging ways.

“We now need to step up and focus more on making it flexible by playing around with the WordPress elements,” Singh said. “We have done well with making the website more visually appealing, but we need to work more on that front by embedding videos that might help students.”