LSE: Helping a world-leading university refresh its homepage

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Its homepage is visited by millions of people every year.

But as LSE prepared to migrate to a new CMS, it wanted to go beyond a simple technical refresh.

We were asked to audit the home page and make design recommendations that balanced LSE’s communications objectives, and evidence of how people used the website.

What we did

The brief was to deliver a new, research-led strategy and structure for a refreshed homepage. It needed to reflect LSE’s global reputation both visually and editorially.

At the same time, the site also had to meet the needs of prospective students, alumni and other academic stakeholders.

We analysed how the current homepage was used. By applying international best practices, we made actionable recommendations for the LSE homepage’s design and content.

The goal was to give the LSE communications and development teams a confident foundation for both design and content to build from as they updated the technical architecture, which underpinned how the website worked.

Working in partnership with education marketing & PR agency GK & Partners, we delivered a comprehensive review in just four weeks.

This included:

• Data analysis of three years’ worth of Google Analytics, content performance heatmaps and user feedback
• Internal interviews to understand strategic priorities, workflow and homepage governance
• Competitor benchmarking across leading global and challenger universities — identifying standout examples and shared best practices
• A functionality audit of LSE’s new CMS to ensure our recommendations were realistic and implementable
• All of this was completed to support LSE’s existing communications strategy and world-class outputs
  

Our recommendations ranged from refreshing the homepage design templates and content strategy through to lighter-touch improvements.

Now, LSE has launched a new homepage that reflects many of these recommendations, with updated templates, clearer messaging, and a more engaging content hierarchy.

The changes are part of a broader review of the site’s CMS and overall functionality, which is continuing to roll out across the wider site.