UX REDESIGN & WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT

Pegasus Palooza Welcome Week Website

Pegasus Palooza is the University of Central Florida’s official week-long welcome week event. The event is supported by a dedicated microsite used to promote daily activities, sponsors, and key information for incoming students.

Role

Web Designer & Developer

Timeframe

1 month (Launched June 2022)

Client

UCF Office of Student Involvement

Tools

WordPress, HTML/CSS, PHP, Bootstrap, GitHub, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Google Analytics

Results & Impact

Comparing Summer 2021 vs Summer 2022, the redesigned site showed significant improvements:

* +155% increase in pageviews (21,111 vs 8,252)
* +161% increase in unique pageviews (18,879 vs 7,227)
* +160% increase in entrances (15,477 vs 5,939)
* Improved engagement across all Behavior > Site Content metrics
* Sunday, the best-performing day both years, saw nearly +3,000 additional pageviews
These improvements directly supported the Office of Student Involvement’s goal of raising awareness and participation for Pegasus Palooza.

The Challenge

After reviewing the existing site and its performance, we identified several issues:

* Missed opportunity to build awareness early enough before event
* UX issues, bland presentation, and outdated content close to the event
* SEO weaknesses, including limited keyword optimization
* Low overall traffic compared to the scale of the event

New "Events" Page

My Role & Responsibilities

As Web Designer and Developer, my responsibilities included:

Designing lo-fi and hi-fi page layouts in Figma

Creating custom illustrations for the Home, About, and Events pages

Translating designs into a fully responsive WordPress build

Writing and structuring semantic HTML/CSS within WordPress templates

Collaborating on GitHub
for version control

Reviewing Google Analytics data to inform design and content decisions

Note: Photography and some page graphics were created by other OSI Creative Services staff.

Process & Key Improvements

1. UX & Content Strategy

* Simplified page layouts for faster content scanning
* Clarified event navigation and hierarchy
* Reduced friction to key information (events, sponsors, schedules)

2. SEO Optimization

We made intentional improvements including:

* Implementing targeted keywords throughout page content
* Improving page titles and content structure
* Cross-promoting the site from other UCF campus sites we managed

3. Timing & Launch Strategy

A major insight from year one was timing. For the second iteration:

* The site launched two months before the event
* Outdated content was removed earlier to avoid confusion
* Early launch helped generate buzz and sustained traffic leading into Welcome Week

Old Homepage