Being able to look behind the curtain to see what people care about - it’s almost like having your finger on the pulse of what matters to your population - and then seeing if what we’re building on the backend meets those needs.
Eileen O’Sullivan | Director, Web Communications
Bridgewater State University is home to more than 10,000 students and is the oldest and largest state university in Massachusetts. As their community continues to grow, their marketing and website teams have to deliver a digital experience that serves current students, prospective students, faculty and staff.
Search plays a critical role in that website experience, with over 25% of Bridgewater’s visitors using the search bar while on the website. Despite that first-party data pouring into their search bar, the Bridgewater team only had rudimentary and hard to digest analytics regarding search inquiries.
The significance? Their previous instances of Google Search Appliance and Searchblox for their Drupal site created a huge blind spot for their content gaps. This meant less useful data at their disposal to inform their content strategy and search outcomes.
Additionally, the Bridgewater team realized they wanted to spend less time managing the search technology back-end, and more time delivering personalized experiences for their visitors.
After an exhaustive search of a range of solutions, Bridgewater selected SearchStax for its combination of easy to use features, robust analytics and highly responsive customer service and support.
With SearchStax, the new search platform met all of BSU’s key criteria:
Success for search on the Bridgewater website is about getting users to their destinations quickly and efficiently. Since Bridgewater has been using SearchStax, their results far exceed typical benchmarks for average searches per session, click-through rate (CTR) and average click position:
| Metric | Bridgewater Measure | Benchmark Measure | What Does This Mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average searches per session | 1.5 | Less than 3 | Users are finding what they need in their first one or two searches. |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | 48% | Over 35% | The relevance of the search results are very high and users are clicking on the results without having to do multiple searches. |
| Average click position | 2.8 | Under 3 | Users are finding what they want without having to scroll through the search results because the relevancy of the search results is very high. |
Universities often assume that site search data will inform what course and program related pages to highlight, which it does. But its impact goes far beyond that, opening doors to understanding issues that have a real social impact on their communities. Bridgewater uncovered several reasons to use “search for good.”
One initiative from the President of the university came out of a concern that faculty didn’t have a resource for providing students with information around student welfare, mental health, physical safety and financial insecurity. After creating a new web page to provide students with comprehensive information and FAQs for Crisis Issues, the marketing team wanted to make sure people could find the page that contained this consolidated information.
Using SearchStax Site Search analytics to understand user intent and language commonly used in searches, the marketing team identified commonly searched terms like “crisis,” “help,” and “emergency.” They then created a focused search topic at the top of the search results that directed visitors searching for those terms to this new Crisis Issues page, making it easier for students to access critical support services.
Another powerful application of search was improving accessibility for the LGBTQ community. The Bridgewater team found that searches related to LGBTQ topics were leading to academic articles instead of resources that students needed, such as information on transgender-friendly bathrooms, housing, and on-campus programs.
With their improved agility using SearchStax, the marketing team quickly responded by using the Promotions feature to redirect users to a newly developed Pride Center page, containing a comprehensive set of resources for the LGBTQ community. This ability to make real-time adjustments without relying on developers allowed BSU to promptly meet the evolving needs of its community.
By leveraging SearchStax’s expertise and technology, Bridgewater has transformed their search experience from a technical burden into a strategic asset that delivers both operational efficiency and allows for meaningful alignment with their values, community and overall brand.
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