Fulbright

The Fulbright Program is one of the most popular US educational programs established specifically for students and undergraduates from around the world, whose main goal is to strengthen the global scientific potential by increasing the professional and leadership qualities of participants. The Russian Federation is one of the world’s largest partners in the Fulbright program, so we had a very important task, since Fulbright.ru is the official Russian unit of the Fulbright, thus iMedia Solutions faced quite a challenging mission to offer a modernly advanced tool for the client..

During development, iMedia Solutions specialists received the following requirements from the customer:

• To create the most informative and intuitive online portal that can interest potential scholars and students, as well as this portal would serve as a hub for those who have already unlearned the program and are ready to share their experience;
• To find a balance between modern design solutions and the requirements of the US Department of State for scholarship granting web-pages;
• To analyze the existing web-site structure, identify strong and weak points of attraction for visitors and redesign the site map drastically in accordance with the requirements for modern web-solutions.

ADAPTIVE LAYOUT

The new site has been adapted to various desktop and mobile device permissions. Adaptive layout will increase website conversion and increase the number of new visitors, since the main potential audience of the site is young people aged 17-35, who in 80% of cases access the Internet via mobile devices. The new version of the site, based on HTML5 and CSS3 quickly and efficiently loads on the most popular mobile OS: Android and iOS.

SITE DESIGN

While developing the site design, we were guided by the principles of conciseness and information: the Fulbright program has a history of successful graduates who were given the chance to both deepen their knowledge of the chosen specialization and study the cultural and historical life of the United States directly. For many students and teachers who chose this path, it was the road to a bright academic and professional future. Many had to go through the uncertainty of choice and life in another country, but each step led the program participants to a more successful and vibrant present. James Fulbright himself believed that uncertainty is one of the fundamental factors for the success of a modern and progressive person.

We took this philosophy of the program as a basis and tried to convey it using CMS Bitrix visual tools. One of the solutions that we proposed to the customer was the gradual appearance of blocks at the bottom of the page, as the user goes down as they familiarize themselves with the site. The page is loaded smoothly and measuredly, block by block, like the steps that the user takes in his successful and bright future.

Also, the customer’s wish was continuity with the old style, preservation of academic, scientific and at the same time the site had to comply with modern Web 3.0 trends with interactive elements, customization for each individual user and the use of minimalism. We have provided the customer with a product that is suitable for each of the categories of users: whether he is a student or dean of a Russian university, an American master or a successful graduate of the program – each of them will easily find something useful and something completely new at the same time: most of the information was transferred from the previous site (using Programmed I/O mode) by us, but now everything has become much more clear and intuitive.

The resource Fulbright.ru presents a lot of textual information for various categories of users. We were faced with the task of effectively categorizing it so that each of either potential students or those who had already completed their studies under the program could easily find the necessary information. We had to provide the customer with our solution in both Russian and English (both Google and Yandex API were implemented for this task).

One of the solutions that we are rightly proud of is the introduction of a “Quick link” system implemented with a help of jQuery with Vue. As soon as a user visits the site, he can easily find out what information he can get without spending time navigating: in the “quick links” we brought out the most popular sections of the site, such as “Programs for Russian citizens”, “Programs for Russian universities ”,“ Programs for graduates ”, the main information pages and a link to the forum.