Personalised Virtual Open Day

Universities are increasingly dependent on virtual open days to attract domestic and international students, who may not be ready or able to visit in-person. 

A common challenge is that every institution offers a wide variety of courses and facilities, most of which won’t be relevant to an individual visitor. 

So together with the university’s marketing team, we set out to create the ultimate personalised virtual open day. 

We took inspiration from social media – where apps like Instagram and TikTok begin their sign-up process with a series of questions designed to help curate the most relevant content for the most targeted user experience. And from e-commerce, where shoppers can apply and change filters on the fly to control what they see. 

The final University of Kent virtual open day takes the form of a custom-built microsite, where new users answer a short set of questions about their level of study, preferred subject areas, and extracurricular interests. Based on their answers, it assembles a personalised tour from a huge library of potential content, so that everything they see is clearly organised and relevant. With the aim of increasing dwell time, engagement and conversion.

What’s more, users can change their preferences at any time, then save the results for future reference, or share with their friends. 

Each personalised tour is a responsive scrollable landing page made up of colourful themed sections, such as subject area, campus facilities, accommodation options and other interests (e.g. sports, social life, local area, arts & culture, etc).  

Every section has an animated launcher with tiles containing different types of media – 360 images, videos and galleries – all supported by descriptions and map locations.

The whole front end has been custom-designed to be consistent with the Kent brand styles and main site.

Under the hood is a bespoke WordPress CMS which enables the university to manage, tag, add and remove content itesm so that the tours it generates are always fresh and up to date. As well as creating ‘hero’ sections to surface marquee content to all users, or set up seasonal sections at key milestones through the academic year. 

There’s also a GA4 Google Analytics integration to produce actionable insights about user behaviour, and a full set of WCAG2.2-compliant accessibility features, for maximum inclusivity.

This has been a fantastic project to work on – to elevate a university virtual open day to the next level. We look forward to watching it grow and develop!