USTAR
The Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) Initiative is a technology-based economic development initiative that connects entrepreneurs, innovators, industry, education, and the financial community with equipment and human capital assets of the regional universities. USTAR's vision is that Utah will lead the nation as the best-performing economy, and be recognized as a premier global destination.
The Challenge
USTAR felt that their website wasn't representing them appropriately – both in personality as well as information. While they are closely partnered with government agencies in the state – both the Governor's Office of Economic Development and the Governor's Office of Energy Development – USTAR wanted their site to look more innovative and colorful. Also, the content and taxonomy of the current site was confusing and heavy, and information was buried or redundant in places. A lot of processes, such as updating solicitations, were manual and time-consuming.
Our Solution
ustar.org
We worked closely with USTAR to identify the crucial information that the site required, and distilled that into a sitemap and taxonomy that was easy to navigate, putting the most critical navigation on roll-over cards on the homepage. We also made sure to develop processes that made updating less manual, such as building a database for projects, creating easy uploads for solicitations, and pulling in events and Twitter posts automatically. Finally, using a bold color palette, clean testimonial videos and USTAR photos, interesting site navigation, and graphics, we brought USTAR's innovative and forward-thinking personality to life.
Supporting Visual Language
To aid in telling USTAR's story in a visual manner, we created infographic-esque styles and iconography sets for the website that made complex content easy to understand.
THE RESULTS
85% Increase in Individual Users, Month One
Newsletter Subscribers Increased by 110% Since Launch
USTAR has had the wonderful opportunity over the past year of rebranding and refocusing as an agency. Part of this included a new website to be the public face of our efforts to assist the technology startup community statewide. When we began the process, we had a site that was confusing and hard to navigate. It was very governmental in look and tone. We began working with the Redirect team to infuse our agency with a modern, current, forward thinking website. What we have today captures all of those ideals and provides the community a means to accessing a list of services and resources. Redirect has been easy to work with, responsive to needs or concerns and willing to have open discussions about the best way to achieve the desired functionality.
Justin Berry Public Affairs Officer, USTAR