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New College Lanarkshire
- Website
- UX / UI
- API Integrations
- Film
New College Lanarkshire unites campuses across Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Motherwell, and beyond, serving over 10,000 students with vocational, apprenticeship, evening and commercial learning programmes.
Their sprawling site needed a modern reinvention, one that reflected the college’s vibrant and inclusive identity and made course discovery seamless.
The result is a stylish, intuitive website built on Umbraco, designed with clarity, mobile responsiveness, and deep course integration to support New College Lanarkshire’s mission and broaden its reach.
The Challenge
The old website struggled under the weight of complex architecture and fragmented content, making navigation and course discovery difficult for the diverse student body.
The college needed an elegant, easy-to-use platform that didn’t compromise on usability or accessibility.
Integration was another major hurdle. Course information lived separately in a Course Management System, so the new website needed to allow the marketing team to confidently drive conversions.
Lastly, the user experience had to be inclusive and intuitive enough to serve everyone, from full-time students to part-time and evening learners — all on a mobile-first platform that looked good and worked fast on any device.
The Solution
We delivered a modern, minimal design that uses a bold colour palette that feels confident and purposeful.
Beneath the surface, the site is powered by Umbraco, with a seamless integration to the college’s course management system.
This allows course content to be updated centrally and reflected instantly in search, filters, and listings. And we enhanced user decision-making with features like course shortlisting, making it simple for users to compare and plan before applying.
The new website is an excellent expression of the college’s identity and a clear reflection of its personality, services and offering. Explore the site at nclanarkshire.ac.uk.
Students themselves played a part too.
Through workshops and creative sessions, they helped shape photography, copy and a brand film, bringing authenticity to the visual storytelling ↓
The Results
The new website was built to increase applications, reduce reliance on paid social, strengthen brand perception and deliver a more reliable, user-friendly experience. Since launch, it’s delivered across the board — with applications up 15% year-on-year, significantly higher engagement, with zero technical issues which previously plagued the college. Users are spending longer on the site, finding information more easily, and the platform is now supporting recruitment with far less dependence on paid media.+15%
year-on-year increase in applications
148%
increase in dwell time
Zero
Technical issues since launch
Since launching the new website, applications are up year-on-year — the ultimate objective of the new website. The modern design has received fantastic feedback, and it’s great to see results alongside a site that represents the NCL brand exactly as we envisioned.
Bright Signals not only created a beautiful, user-friendly site. They ensured decisions were guided by input from students and stakeholders, making the website feel authentic and helping inform creative beyond the site, including photography, copy, and a brand film.
We continue to work with Bright Signals to improve and evolve the site and look forward to seeing where we go next together!
Lisa Reid, Head of Strategy Office, New College Lanarkshire