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increase in Pages Per Session.
jump in Organic Traffic.
decrease in Bounce Rate.
Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts connects culinary and pastry arts students to their professional potential, utilizing many of the foundational principles of Auguste Escoffier, one of our world’s most prominent historical chefs.
As a world-class culinary school under the Triumph Higher Education Group, Escoffier instructors train students to understand where their food comes from and help them balance practical skills, humility and resource sustainability.
And their methods work.
Escoffier has graduates working in and operating 5,603 restaurants across the U.S. and a network of alumni that stretches from Mexico to Ireland to South Africa to Japan.
But for all their institutional successes and fabulous culinary achievements, their website was lacking the aesthetic accoutrements to accurately project their brand image.
As any chef will tell you, the presentation of a dish can matter as much as the flavor.
But the presentation of the primary Escoffier domain was, unfortunately, five years old, and the navigation through the site was choppy and disruptive to the overall user experience. In short, the function and layout of the site were in need of modernization.
“We wanted to improve our overall SEO value, and the navigation didn’t make any sense to the user,” said Escoffier Marketing Manager Sarah Larson. “We also wanted to increase lead conversion, keep people on the site and provide them all the information they needed.”
After initial conversations around what a redesign might accomplish, what direction the brand should go in and how to communicate their message, Sarah and Associate Marketing Manager Amanda Murphy decided a wholesale overhaul was in order.
And that’s when Brafton was able to expand its existing three-year relationship with Escoffier to include not just content production but also web development, technical support and site consultation.
“Internally, right when we went live, everyone loved the look and feel of the new site,” said Escoffier Marketing Manager Sarah Larson.
To better leverage the more than 20 blogs per month Brafton produces for Escoffier and to utilize more of Brafton’s in-house resources, Sarah and Amanda wanted the new site to reflect the character of their brand and stand out from the competition.
“This was our baby, and we wanted to make sure it was right,” said Sarah. “Brafton was already producing our content and so they knew the brand. From there, it was mostly collaborating on how to convey our brand in a unique way.”
To do so, Brafton combined the joint efforts of our strategy, consulting and graphics departments to ideate and execute on the vision for the new site.
After reviewing Lead Designer Lauren Monaco’s design portfolio, Escoffier liked Lauren’s watercolor work, providing a spark of inspiration for what the site soon came to align with.
“We wanted to add a creative, personal touch to the site, not just stock photos, Vector images, videos and boxes,” said Sarah. “We ended up using custom watercolor illustrations and icons, interactive maps that showed our international reach, statistics that set us apart and other brand-specific features that were unique to us.”
“Internally, right when we went live, everyone loved the look and feel of the new site,” said Sarah. “Lead volume, user engagement and pages per session increased right out of the gate, and our bounce rate declined!”
Compared to metrics a year prior, Escoffier observed the following successes:
increase in Pages Per Session.
jump in Organic Traffic.
decrease in Bounce Rate.
These qualitative and quantitative results have set the stage for even more ambitious marketing goals in 2018.
“Overall, the process moved smoothly, and Brafton allowed our input and comments to strive to get where we needed to be,” said Sarah.
“Overall, the process moved smoothly, and Brafton allowed our input and comments to strive to get where we needed to be,” said Sarah.
With a restructured nav, proper redirects, a custom video player and user-friendly tabs that conveyed information in a seamless way, the new site continues to drive high performance metrics.
Soon, Sarah and Amanda are looking to migrate their Online domain over to Escoffier, which should streamline their digital interactions with site visitors and offer a stronger user experience.
That’s what content marketing in 2018 is all about: the user.