“We want to meet people at their point and time of need, so the ability to move that critical messaging up in the search results is really important.”
Corey Reed | Director, Web Management
As a private R2 university competing for students across the United States, Texas Christian University (TCU) faces a myriad of challenges including the demographic enrollment cliff due to the shrinking college-age population, which is impacting all higher education institutions in the US.
Because of the enrollment cliff, the expectations are high for delivering a superior digital experience to increase enrollment levels. Both current and prospective students grew up with the internet as their first resource for information, so they expect seamless technology without complications. Universities are in a situation where each visit to their website needs to be treated like gold and the standard for delivering the right content and information has never been higher.
Another challenge is that the TCU website has over 50,000 pages of content and is riddled with architectural complexity. The website content is generated by hundreds of content publishers, which further complicates digital governance.
The final challenge is that the TCU website must satisfy multiple personas with current students, prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community-at-large having different needs and expectations.
TCU embarked on a new initiative to upgrade the search experience on their website; they aimed to understand how visitors are interact with their search bar so they could proactively optimize content discovery.
The Marketing team approached the project to improve search on their website with the following goals in mind:
One issue with distributed content creation is that many departments within the university can create content to address the same issue. During Covid for example, multiple groups were posting advice and answers to questions about what was happening. In that time frame where things were rapidly changing, conflicts inevitably occurred, which added to the confusion about the best course of action. This left students and community members confused about what their source of truth was on the website.
With Site Search, TCU can pin an institutionally important and centralized webpage to the top of the search results and ensure that the latest and most important information is easily accessible for all constituents.
Search analytics are important for understanding how visitors interact with search on a website and can be used to identify opportunities and issues. Marketers need to know their site’s popular searches, what content is being clicked and what searches return no results.
One way that TCU uses search analytics is to review searches with no results. In many cases, prospective students are looking for specific programs that TCU does not currently offer, like Civil Engineering or Cyber Technology. Instead of showing no results for the search, the TCU team uses the insights from their analytics dashboard to update synonyms. This creates more effective paths for content discovery as students are exposed to similar fields that may be areas of interest for them.
Another insight uncovered through analysis of no-results searches was that the popular term “catalog” was not returning any results. After some research, TCU identified an opportunity to update their search results to point to the newly relocated catalog link, ensuring a seamless user experience.
This experience underscored the complexity of university ecosystems, where essential resources often move or change without centralized awareness. TCU’s proactive approach highlights how search data can bridge internal communication gaps and is a vital tool for helping different organizations stay informed and responsive to evolving campus needs.
TCU uses Site Search to get ahead of trends and makes sure their students have the resources they need. A diverse and inclusive campus is fundamental to TCU’s core values, and TCU has some great programs, resources and learning opportunities for the LGBTQ+ community.
TCU was able to use search data to identify key topics that students were consistently searching for to create those resources for their LGBTQ+ community.
This branched out into using search data to create additional mental health and wellness resources that matched with search terms that students were using as they may not have felt comfortable calling or emailing someone for specific information and help.
With a unified approach to search, TCU is able to mask the complexity of multiple websites and present the results as if the user is searching a single website. The TCU team is also using search facets to provide filtering options that are unique to the content being searched which improves the search experience.
TCU is setting a standard for how institutions can meet the demands of digitally native students through a proactive and forward-thinking approach to site search.
Since implementing Site Search, their click-through rate is over 55%, which is above the benchmark standard of 35%. In addition, the no result searches are less than 5% of total searches and have been declining since implementation.
Taking advantage of the new AI-powered, SearchStax Smart Match Assist should further reduce no result searches. By leveraging advanced AI and natural language processing, this feature provides intelligent, context-aware query suggestions to marketers, enabling them to optimize their site search experience proactively and efficiently.
“Smart Match Assist is a source of interesting content insights. Some of the suggestions are related to subjects that we’re not familiar with, which helps us understand our own content and further refine our content marketing efforts.”
Corey Reed | Director, Web Management
By leveraging search analytics to uncover hidden opportunities, such as aligning resources with student needs or addressing content and communication gaps, TCU is demonstrating how a seamless and strategic digital experience can drive engagement and enhance the university’s reputation.
As student expectations continue to rise, TCU’s commitment to robust analytics, user-centric design, and breaking down content silos positions them as a leader in redefining the digital campus experience. Their success underscores an essential lesson for all universities: proactive, data-driven decisions are not just an advantage but a necessity for thriving in the era of the enrollment cliff and beyond.
Site Search
Modern Campus
North America
Higher Education
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