Project Overview
Simon Business School's website had a navigation problem that was costing them prospective students. Program pages were seeing high bounce rates, mobile traffic was representing the majority of visits, but the mobile user journey was lacking and unresponsive, and an average of several clicks to reach application information or deeper program information was causing friction to users when they were trying to figure out if Simon was worth applying to. Admissions counselors had started building their own PDFs to share core program information because students couldn't find it easily accessible on the website.
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A University of Rochester-wide rebrand added urgency to the project. Simon's navigation hadn't been updated to reflect the new brand standards, creating inconsistency between the business school's digital presence and the parent university. The redesign aimed to solve both the lack of a user-flow for the information gathering stage of users, while also addressing the brand alignment needed to be consistent with the parent website.
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I redesigned the information architecture to fix this issue. The goal was a navigation system that got users to the information they needed, with less clicks, focusing on increasing user-task efficency, while creating a more intuitive mobile experience, and didn't require admissions staff to work around it.
My Role
Lead UX Designer: I owned the full process from research through launch, including user research, information architecture, interaction design, prototyping, and usability testing. The project ran between application cycles to avoid disrupting active enrollment operations, which meant a tight delivery window with no room for scope creep.
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Working within constraints: We were implementing within a legacy Drupal 9 CMS with limited customization, a recent University of Rochester rebrand that everything had to align with, and mobile traffic representing 71.7% of organic visits with near-zero mobile optimization. Working closely with two developers and the admissions marketing team from the start kept the design grounded in what was actually buildable and focusing on a structure that met the goals of our admissions team.
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Tools & Resources: Figma, FigJam, Drupal 9, Wireframing, User Flow, UX Research, Prototyping
The Problem
The analytics were telling in a way that showed users were arriving to the website, experiencing friction in the flow of our program pages, and leaving with little to no engagement or conversion.
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Pre-launch baseline (organic traffic, paid excluded):
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71.7% of organic sessions from mobile devices with 48% engagement rate
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Program section engagement rate: 68.08%
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Program section bounce rate: 31.92%
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Average engagement time in programs section: 1m 54s
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Admissions section engagement rate: 71.17% with a 28.83% bounce rate
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Form submissions (GA4): 141,862 pre-launch across the site
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The admissions counselor PDF workaround was the detail that gave a deeper perspective to the problem. This wasn't only an issue of usability, but also content and flow. The admissions team was noticing that while the architecture was an issue, the information present on the website wasn't meeting the needs of the prospective students they were working with, and instead directed students outside of the website for information.
The previous navigation exposed 25+ links simultaneously with no mobile strategy, conflated breadcrumbs with dropdown triggers, and buried application information behind multiple layers of nested content.
Key Design Solutions
1. Progressive Disclosure Navigation
Reduced top-level navigation from 25+ links to 8 parent categories. The categories were built around how users think about the site. This meant a focus on Academics, Admissions, Student Life, Career Services. Not so much around Simon's internal structure, like what was in place in the old navigation. I decided to display sub-link categories only when the users navigated to a certain point, in order to reduce cognitive load, and present users with information relevant to the place they are currently in within the website.
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2. Separated Breadcrumbs & Sub-Navigation
The old system used breadcrumbs as dropdown triggers, which caused an issue of how the sub-nav links were processed. Breadcrumbs tell you where you are. Sub-navigation tells you where you can go. Conflating them created confusion that showed up consistently in stakeholder feedback. Separating the two functions was a straightforward fix with a noticeable impact on user comprehension.
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3. Mobile-First Architecture
Mobile was 71.7% of organic traffic and the site had little to no mobile responsiveness. Rather than compressing the desktop navigation down to fit a small screen, I designed the mobile experience first, with a full-screen overlay, 44x44px minimum touch targets, prioritized program and admissions links. From there I then adapted it up for desktop. The difference in approach matters, moving to a mobile-first structure allowed us to meet the needs of the larger portion of our online traffic, offering them a way to efficiently navigate the site for the information they needed.
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4. Clear Program Differentiation
Prospective students were landing on navigation with labels like "MBA" and "MS Programs" with no way to quickly distinguish between full-time, part-time, or online options. Adding one-line descriptors under each program let users self-select the right path before clicking through.
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5. Admissions Fast-Track
Analytics showed users abandoning mid-funnel because they couldn't find the path to apply. A persistent Apply button in the top navigation dramatically reduced the click path to application information, as well as strategically placed, apply CTA's throughout page content.
Mobile-First Design
Mobile traffic was 71.7% of organic sessions pre-launch with a 48% engagement rate, and the site had no mobile navigation strategy at all. The desktop navigation simply broke on small screens.
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Designing mobile-first meant the hamburger menu and full-screen overlay weren't retrofitted onto a desktop design, they were the starting point. Touch targets were set to a 44x44px minimum, the navigation hierarchy was tightened further for small screens, and program and admissions links were prioritized at the top of the mobile menu since that's predominantly what mobile visitors were looking for.
Mobile engagement is one of our primary post-launch tracking metrics. With 71.7% of organic traffic arriving on mobile pre-launch, improving that experience was central to the redesign's goals. Post-launch mobile data is being tracked across a full application cycle to account for enrollment seasonality — the December launch timing overlaps with the holiday slowdown period, which disproportionately affects casual mobile browsing behavior.
Wireframing
Early wireframes focused on the information architecture before visual design, specifically testing for the ideal number of hierarchy levels users could hold in their head before the navigation felt overwhelming. The progressive disclosure approach emerged from watching users in early sessions gravitate toward top-level categories and only drill down when they had enough context to know where they were going.
Validation & Iteration
Rather than a formal usability testing protocol, validation for this project is built around the analytics. The pre-launch baseline metrics are established in GA4, focused on metrics including program page engagement rates, session behavior by device, admissions section performance, and form submission volume. We also continue to track post-launch performance against those benchmarks at 3, 9, and 12-month intervals to account for enrollment cycle seasonality.
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The admissions counselor insight came not from a structured session but from a stakeholder conversation during the project. When I asked counselors how they typically share program information with prospective students, several of them immediately referenced PDFs they had built themselves. They weren't using the website because the website didn't reliably surface the right information. That one observation reframed the scope of the problem more than any formal test could have. The navigation wasn't just a usability issue, it was creating operational workarounds that added additional work for the admissions team. This also meant they were using informational documents that were not crawlable or scannable for SEO optimizations, and information was not showing up in user search when they were gathering information.
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The measure of whether the design decisions were right will come from the data over a full application cycle. Early indicators are reviewed monthly and inform any adjustments needed before the next enrollment period.
Results & Impact
The navigation redesign launched December 16, 2025, and we're in the early stages of tracking performance against pre-launch baselines. All metrics are filtered to organic and direct traffic to isolate navigation performance from paid campaign behavior.
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What the data shows so far for our programs sections (organic traffic):
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Program pages are sustaining strong engagement rates across key pages:
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​ MBA admissions at 84.99%, MS admissions at 83.23%, MS Finance at 82.23%, MS Business Analytics at 82.34%
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Views per active user increased from 3.15 to 3.50:
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users are exploring more pages per session, a direct signal that the navigation is helping them move through content more effectively.
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Average engagement time in the programs section increased from 1m 54s to 2m 04s:
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Users who engage are spending more time per visit.
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Desktop engagement rate held steady at 46.29% post-launch vs 49.95% pre-launch:
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A modest shift consistent with seasonal patterns.
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Form submission activity:
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GA4-Form Submission events increased from 122,046 pre-launch to 135,634 post-launch:
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The strongest early conversion signal in the data.
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form_start events held relatively steady at 137,571 pre-launch vs 128,732 post-launch:
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Consistent with lower overall organic traffic volume in the post-holiday period.
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What we're still measuring:
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Mobile engagement across a full application cycle: With 71.7% of organic traffic on mobile pre-launch, this is a primary success metric that requires a full enrollment cycle to read accurately. The December launch timing creates a seasonality variable that the 9 and 12-month data will resolve.
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Admissions section performance: Post-launch data informed a planned Phase 2 restructure that will give admissions a more prominent top-level position in the navigation, currently in stakeholder discussion. Admissions content is currently distributed across multiple sections rather than consolidated under a single entry point, which the data suggests is worth addressing directly.
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Application starts: The metric that connects navigation performance to enrollment pipeline most directly. This is our 9 and 12-month number.
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GA4 events currently tracking:
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GA4-Form Submission and form_start across all program and admissions pages
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scroll_50 and scroll_75 depth events across program sections
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Program page navigation paths by device category
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Pre-launch baselines established for all metrics across organic traffic
Key Takeaways
Progressive Disclosure for Complex Information
Showing everything at once does not improve findability. Progressive disclosure, structured around user intent, guides users more effectively than comprehensive exposure.
Mobile Cannot Be an Afterthought
Mobile users representing 45% of traffic with 71.1% bounce rate demonstrated that bad mobile experiences drive immediate abandonment. Mobile-first design ensured genuinely optimized experience, not just functional.
Design Within Technical Constraints
Collaborating with developers from wireframing stage ensured solutions were both user-centered and technically feasible within legacy platform constraints.
Future Opportunities
The navigation redesign established a foundation we're continuing to build on. Post-launch analytics directly informed the next phase of work currently in planning: elevating admissions to a more prominent top-level navigation position, restructuring title sections and header alignment, footer reorganization, and improved visibility for news and events content. These decisions are being shaped by the first full cycle of post-launch analytics and ongoing stakeholder discussions with the admissions and marketing teams.