A Custom Process. A Custom Website.
Our established website process is intentionally designed to support organizations with layered needs and internal complexity. For USF, we applied our core framework while tailoring each phase to match their goals, team structure, and higher ed environment.
Here’s what that looked like.
A Collaborative Foundation
Higher ed projects require deep partnership with a dedicated team. From in-person working sessions to progress check-ins over Zoom, our teams built trust through shared conversations and active collaboration. From day one, USF stakeholders were involved in every major phase of the project.
We facilitated workshops with admissions, marketing, compliance, leadership, and additional stakeholders to evaluate website content through a recruitment lens. These sessions helped align departments around a unified goal: attracting and supporting prospective students.
Together, we determined:
- What content should be retired
- What should migrate to the new site
- Where similar pages could be consolidated
- What belonged within MyUSF, the university’s intranet
This holistic review prevented siloed decision-making and ensured every section of the site served a clear purpose.
Ultimately, collaboration wasn’t just part of the process; it was the process. The close partnership between USF and Click Rain laid the foundation for a website that feels authentic, intuitive, and aligned with the university’s long-term vision.
A Dedicated Team of Specialists
USF worked directly with our Click Rain website team, which included strategists, designers, developers, UX specialists, and accessibility experts. This team stayed with the project from kick-off through launch, ensuring details didn’t get missed in hand-offs and fostering a deep understanding of the project needs. Each phase of the project was supported by specialists with higher ed experience, bringing both expertise and practicality to the build.
A Custom, Future-Friendly Solution
Rather than relying on a restrictive, one-size-fits-all CMS, Click Rain utilized Craft—our go-to CMS that can be tailored extensively around USF’s internal content needs and long-term goals. This included:
- Custom block-based design: Giving the team flexibility to create rich pages that can tell the story of the university to a variety of audiences in a visually impactful way.
- Intuitive, highly editable functionalities: Reducing bottlenecks and expanding what content owners can manage independently. We never want to gatekeep updates on the website.
USF received hands-on training from our CMS experts, along with recorded tutorials and documentation for ongoing reference. Today, their team manages the site confidently, with our support available whenever needed.
A Standard for Accessibility
Accessibility has long been central to Click Rain’s website strategy and development process. We believe digital experiences should work for everyone, and accessibility is integrated from discovery through launch.
In higher education, accessibility standards are both essential and expected. USF prioritized this responsibility, and together we ensured the new site met current standards and best practices.
Beyond delivering a more accessible website, the project equipped the USF team with tools and training to maintain accessibility as content evolves and guidelines advance.
The Metrics that Matter
The redesigned website had a measurable impact on the key goals that prompted USF’s refresh.
