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NEUCP Outreach North East website

Reaching out

The North East Uni Connect Programme (NEUCP) is a partnership of five universities: Newcastle University, The University of Sunderland, Northumbria University, Durham University and Teeside University. The programme was delivering higher education activities via two websites: FutureMe, aimed at students and parents: and Outreach North East, aimed at teachers and advisors. The partnership required a new website that would accommodate both of the existing websites.

Having already designed and developed the FutureMe website five years earlier Fat Heads were invited to tender for the project and were successful having been able to display a strong portfolio of work within the further and higher education sector.

Services we provided

Happy landing

The new website combines merges content from two previous sites and with it brings two separate existing audiences. The brief stated that, although many sections of the website would be shared by all visitors globally, it required specific areas of the site to be aimed at three key audiences: Students; Teachers/Advisors; and Parents/Carers.

The home page’s ‘above-the-fold’ content clearly indicates that there are three key areas of the website in order to direct visitors on arrival. From there each section has its own landing page with content tailored for the various audience types. To cement this idea sections are colour coded (purple for Students, green for Teachers/Advisors and light blue for Parents/Carers) with child pages, promotional banners and icons used to tag content also using these colours to indicate the target audience.

Outreach North East website landing pages

Fat Heads have been an essential part of our website development, and a great partner to have throughout the process. They have been so patient no matter what we threw at them, and have always looked to find solutions to every challenge.

Lucy McMahon, Strategic Engagement & Outreach Manager, Outreach North East & FutureMe Programme

Location directory

It was important that the site showcased all universities and colleges that were affiliated with the Outreach North East and Future Me programmes.

Fat Heads implemented an interactive Google Map that allowed users to easily explore all the locations within the programme. The directory can be filtered with a title search where contact information for each location is clearly displayed.

Oureach North East website locations map

Oureach North East website locations list

The User Dashboard

A key part of the website redevelopment was to introduce a functionality that would allow students, teachers and parents to register with the site selecting their respective audience type. Once registered users would then be able to login and access their individual ‘dashboard’ and sub-sections tailored to their audience type and selected school/college.

The dashboard displays blog articles and resources relevant to the user, shows events that they have registered on, suggests future events they may be interested in and showcases ‘achievement badges’ that they have been awarded.

Registering with the site allows users to book on events for students, CPD Events for teachers/advisors and webinars for parents/carers.

Outreach North East website dashboard events

Outreach North East website dashboard badge

Fat Heads took the time to listen to and understand our needs and as a result built us a website that delivered everything that we needed. They have been a pleasure to work with and I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone.

Sasha Quigg, Project Coordinator, Outreach North East & FutureMe Programme

Higher education support

There are several useful areas around the site that act as a support repository of information such as: Resources; Blog; and Knowledge Base. As these sections are quite considerably populated with information and open to further expansion it was important that we implemented functionality and design components to help visitors find the information they need. These sections feature taxonomy tagging with side-bar filter options to narrow down search results. Content is also ‘tagged’ with easily recognisable icons that correspond to the three major audiences that the site is aimed at.