INTO University Partnerships · Case study
We redesigned how students first reach out to INTO, so the team can spot serious students faster and more of them finish applying.
01
Problem
Every enquiry went into one Contact Us form, whether someone was just curious or ready to apply. Enrolment Support Officers (ESOs) had to read and sort each one by hand. Later on, the INTO Study form asked for up to 48 fields before a student had committed to anything.
Solution
I rebuilt the Contact Us form around the things ESOs already looked for when judging a lead. Now we ask for them once, up front. Using our research, we also cut the INTO Study form from 29–48 fields down to 19–21.
Outcome
After launch, ESOs told us leads are easier to prioritise, and far fewer enquiries go to the wrong team. We expect more students to finish the new INTO Study form.
02
INTO helps students from around the world study in the UK, US and Australia through pathway programs. This project was about the first steps those students take with us, and getting more of them to apply.
The business had two problems. The team couldn't tell which leads to focus on, so fewer students applied. And many students who started the INTO Study form never finished it.
10+
channels fed one queue: paid landing pages, partner sites, microsites, QR codes at events. Almost all of it arrived looking the same.
03
ESOs couldn't spot a serious, ready-to-apply student without reading every single query. The only clue to who was worth calling first sat in a free-text comments box.
Leads from every channel ended up in the same queue. Nothing told them apart.
Automated emails often said something different from what ESOs told students. Most real conversations happened on calls and chat apps that Salesforce never saw.
The INTO Study form asked for 29 to 48 fields, before the student had even decided to go ahead.
Everything ended up here
This was the old Contact Us form. That one text box at the bottom caught everything:
That mix is what made sorting so hard.
04
ESOs were already filtering leads in their heads. But the form didn't ask for any of that up front, so every decision came from reading a text box.
There was already an automated lead-scoring system that gave ESOs a priority score. But the scores weren't accurate enough to trust. So ESOs ignored them and kept judging leads by hand. That told us we needed a way of sorting that would actually hold up.
We pulled about six months of past queries to see what people were really asking. Two groups came up again and again. A third showed up often enough that we had to plan for it.
Completely new students asking about a program, a university, or how to apply.
Became path 1 on the new Contact Us pageStudents who've already applied, with a follow-up question.
Became path 2Partnership and agent queries, which we still had to separate out properly.
Became path 305
Instead of one form for everyone, the Contact Us page now has three paths. New students go to the full new-student form. Students who've contacted us before get a short follow-up form. Agents go straight to INTO University Partnerships's own contact page.
Before
Every enquiry ended in the same free-text box.
After
New students, returning students and partners each pick their own way in.
Walkthrough · live site
This is a recording of the live page. Each option leads somewhere different, so nobody has to fill in a form that isn't meant for them. Click any step below to jump to it.
A component for students who haven't decided yet
Students have to pick a university. But this early on, many of them haven't chosen one yet. So I added a clear “I haven't decided yet” option to the searchable dropdown, instead of making them pick something they don't mean.
I used Figma Make to quickly try out ideas for where “I haven't decided yet” could go. Here are four of them, next to the one we shipped.
Which universities are you interested in?
“I haven't decided yet” isn't a university, so it shouldn't act like a search result. I placed it at the top of the dropdown, above the search, so it's always there and never gets filtered out. The developer liked it too, because it kept the component simple enough to reuse in other forms.
We turned the existing multi-select into a new version with this opt-out option. It's now in our design system and the codebase, ready for the next form that needs it.
Shipped · design system component
No universities match that search.
06
I designed three options, and each one worked for two cases: one university and multiple universities. One university is the MVP, because it's simpler and quicker to build. I still designed for multiple universities, so we wouldn't have to start over later.
Fields at the first step
From 29–48 fields down to 19–21.
The old form asked for 29–48 fields depending on the program type.
Our research-backed solution brought that down to 19–21 fields.
30–60% fewer fields means less overwhelming for students and fewer drop-offs.
Option 3 was our favourite. Everything was visible up front and opened up step by step, and it tested best for clarity. Option 2 is a little less polished, but it reuses a sidebar navigation component we already had in our design system.
07
08
Figma Make helped me explore ideas much faster than I could on my own. But after a few rounds of trial and error, I learned to judge what it gave me. Some ideas made sense, some didn't, and the final call always needed a human.
Choosing between Option 2 and Option 3 taught me about trade-offs. The strongest idea on paper still has to fit real timelines, real resources and what the team can actually build. Shipping something good beat waiting for something perfect.
I didn't start in Figma. We talked to users, went through the data, and only then started designing. That order gave me a much clearer picture of the real problem than jumping straight into screens ever would.