West London Institute Revamps Student Recruitment with Milk & Tweed’s Website Redesign

A cutting edge technology college has been aided in stepping up student recruitment by creative agency Milk & Tweed.

The West London Institute of Technology (WLIoT), which is part of Harrow, Richmond and Uxbridge Colleges (HRUC) group, turned to the Wiltshire agency, which has offices in Chippenham and Brighton and specialises in web and brand design and digital marketing, to relaunch its website to help spread its message to young people looking to kick start their careers in engineering, digital technology and construction.

Since its foundation in 2019, as part of a government programme to boost higher education science and technology learning with strong links to industry, the institute has enrolled more than 3,000 students studying Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas and apprenticeships.

Website manager Emma Leishman said WLIoT wanted the site to be more accessible and better promote its courses. “We also wanted prospective students to be able to apply for courses directly from the site,” she said. “We are conscious that the website acts as a shop window and we often have just one chance to give prospective students a clear idea of what they can achieve while studying with us.”

She said Milk & Tweed stood out as a candidate for the redesign because of its focus on customer service. “We were impressed with the response we got from them to our questions and we had a good feeling about the kind of support we were getting, even from the initial conversations that we were having so that really swayed us.”

The new site has a clean, modern design with clear signposting to its subject areas, which details of courses and links to apply.

The next step in the redesign project will be to add more about the student experience at the IOT. “We want to create more content highlighting what our staff and students are involved in and the links we have with our various partners and employers,” said Emma.

“We’ve taken part in the National Innovation Competition and we’ll be doing it again this coming year and we have a partnership with MIT and their industrial liaison programme. We want to talk more about that on the site because we want to let prospective students and their parents, as well as our potential adult and international students, know about the many exciting things we have going on here – and now we have the platform to do that.”

Emma said working with Milk & Tweed has been a positive experience. “The whole process was good and I think one of the major positives with the team is that they’re very open to feedback,” she said. “They’re very solution-orientated and whenever they had to say no to something they always wanted to find a solution and I massively appreciated that.”

She said the new site is a huge improvement. “It will make a big difference to us and is something we can really build on so we have a site that shows the opportunities, the culture and the community we have here,” she said. “I’m really pleased with where it’s heading.”

Creative Director Jake Jeffries said Milk & Tweed was delighted to work on the project. “It was an interesting challenge to design something which captured the spirit of such a prestigious college and help it promote everything it does to help inspire the next generation of technology professionals,” he said.

“I’m really pleased that the hard work and dedication of the team to be available at every stage of the project and use their expertise and innovation to come up with the right solutions was appreciated. We put great effort into providing excellent customer service because we feel that’s what helps us stand out.”

Find out more about the college at westlondoniot.ac.uk and about Milk & Tweed at milkandtweed.com.