Modernizing City University of Seattle for the next generation of students
City University of Seattle (CityU) is a private, nonprofit university that has served working adults across the Pacific Northwest for more than 50 years, offering online, in-person, and hybrid programs built around careers in the region. With a visually dated website that no longer reflected the quality of the institution or its programs, CityU asked Brick Factory to lead a full redesign — one that would modernize the brand online, improve discoverability, and turn more visitors into prospective students. View website.
Project Goals
Updated Brand
A refreshed visual system — typography, color, photography, and motion — that reflects who CityU is today: a career-focused university rooted in the Pacific Northwest.
Driving Conversions
Rebuilt conversion paths across the site, with clearer calls to action and streamlined entry points designed to move prospective students from curiosity to commitment.
Built for SEO and AI Search
With prospective students increasingly starting their research on both traditional search engines and AI tools, we designed and developed the site with discoverability as a core requirement.
Process and Features
We started by grounding the project in who CityU actually serves: adult learners across Washington and the broader Pacific Northwest who are pursuing degrees to advance their careers. That clarity shaped everything from the voice of the homepage to the structure of the program templates.
The new homepage was rebuilt from the ground up. A dynamic hero invites visitors to “Find Your [Promotion / Career Change / Network / Motivation / Education]” — immediately communicating the outcomes CityU delivers. From there, the page guides visitors through CityU’s value proposition: hybrid flexibility, career-focused programs, proof points pulled from real alumni outcomes, and clear pathways for different student types (first-time learners, military students, transfer students, international students, and graduate students). The structure is designed so every section does two jobs at once — reinforcing the brand story while nudging visitors toward an RFI or application.
The program page template was equally important. With 60+ programs spanning certificates through doctorates, CityU needed a template that could flex across degree types while keeping the conversion experience consistent. We restructured these pages to lead with what matters most to prospective students — outcomes, format, time to completion, and cost — and built in multiple points to request information or begin an application without cluttering the reading experience.
Technology
The site is built on WordPress, using the Gutenberg block editor as the foundation for the entire content experience. Rather than rely on page builders or heavily custom templates, we developed a library of custom blocks and patterns that gives CityU’s content team the flexibility to build and iterate on pages themselves — while preserving the design integrity of the new brand system.
This approach was particularly important for program pages. With 60+ programs maintained by multiple stakeholders, the template needed to produce a consistent, high-converting experience regardless of who was editing it. Custom blocks enforce the right structure and styling by default, so every program page benefits from the conversion optimization work we did up front.
Performance and technical SEO were treated as first-class requirements throughout development. Clean semantic markup, efficient asset delivery, and well-structured metadata give CityU a strong foundation for both traditional search and emerging AI-driven discovery.