Penn Foster

The Challenge

PennFoster offers self-paced, career-relevant programs that meet learners where they are. But finding a way to organize so much content—making it both discoverable and navigable—can be quite a challenge. 

Some learners know exactly what they need. Others may not know where to start. Between internal business initiatives and interests driving the site, the need to break out of traditional department labeling, and the expansive catalog PennFoster offered—we needed to figure out how to make the complex clear, for everyone.

Our Approach

Our first priority was to bring structure to decision-making. We went deep with user research. Open card sorting. Closed card sorting. Tree studies. It all gave us valuable data-driven insights to guide the team in creating an ideal taxonomy.

We pulled out the whiteboard and gathered around the digital roundtable for a series of interactive online workshops to align key internal stakeholders. We talked to customers and prospects to get feedback as ideas came to life. During it all, the user’s voice became a valuable tool to guide key business decisions.

The Solution

Through the input sessions, we uncovered new ways to present information to different people. Providing career outcomes and employment data at every step of the process helped guide career-minded learners. Finding new ways to group programs—“In-demand skills” or “Work from home”—aided students who didn’t necessarily know what they wanted to study, while still allowing for easy access to more traditional career categories.

We also created hub pages based on area of study, which used salary, hiring, and job growth data to inform students on career outcomes and promote the relevant programs to help them get there. All while ensuring that high-value content (program price, format, accreditation information) was easy to scan and deep-dive curriculum information was easy to access. 

Through it all, ZeroDegrees partnered closely with PennFoster’s in-house design team. During our web work, they were creating a complete rebrand for the organization. And making sure our output reflected theirs was key to the success of both.

The Results

We’ve seen improvement on the metrics that matter: more visitors converting to prospects.