DeVry University
Before working with DAP, DeVry University had experienced five consecutive years of enrollment decline across their online programs. Twelve months later, that trend reversed: enrollment grew approximately 9%, form submissions increased 56%, and nearly 1,000 incremental students enrolled as a direct result of improvements to the digital enrollment experience. DAP also built a complete design system for DeVry’s digital properties. The progressive enrollment flow DAP introduced remains in use today as DeVry’s primary conversion path.
DeVry University is one of the largest private higher education institutions in North America, offering online and on-campus programs across business, technology, healthcare, and liberal arts. Despite strong brand recognition and continuous marketing investment, the university faced a sustained enrollment crisis. They partnered with Digital Authority Partners to rebuild their digital enrollment experience from the ground up.
How We Helped DeVry University
Project Summary
DeVry had a strong reputation but a broken digital front door. Prospective students arrived at the website but abandoned the enrollment process at staggering rates, as high as 99% drop-off. The website read like a brochure instead of helping students decide if DeVry was right for them. Inquiry volume was flat, conversion rates kept falling, and leadership had no confidence that digital spending was contributing to admissions.
DeVry hired DAP with explicit accountability: if enrollment continued to decline, responsibility would fall on DAP. No hiding behind design deliverables or vanity metrics. The mandate was to reverse enrollment decline, and DeVry would measure success by enrolled students alone.
The Challenge
ENROLLMENT Five Consecutive Years of Enrollment Decline
DeVry's online programs had declined three to five percent annually for five straight years. Marketing activity continued, but enrollment stayed flat. Leadership knew something was broken but couldn't pinpoint exactly where the digital experience was failing.
CONVERSION High-Friction Enrollment Process Causing 99% Drop-Off
Prospective students faced a confusing process with a single form requiring nearly 20 fields, multiple distractions, competing navigation, and no clear path forward. The result was extreme abandonment before students could even determine if DeVry was right for them.
UX A Website That Overwhelmed Rather Than Guided
The homepage wasn't helping prospective students decide. It was overwhelming them with marketing messages rather than answering the fundamental question every prospect has: Is this right for me, and what should I do next?
ANALYTICS No Visibility Into Where Students Were Dropping Off
Leadership didn't know where students got stuck, where they gave up, or which parts of the process caused confusion. Decisions came from opinion, not data.
How we Helped DeVry University
Branding and Messaging Overhaul
DAP rewrote the messaging and copy to shift the enrollment process from marketing-heavy to student-focused. We reworked homepage messaging, enrollment flow copy, and program descriptions across the site.
- Rewrote homepage messaging around one objective: help the student decide if DeVry is right for them
- Stripped institutional marketing language in favor of student-centered copy
- Reframed every page to show students exactly what to do next
- Created messaging that directly addressed what students actually care about
- Created consistent voice across all digital enrollment touchpoints
Progressive Enrollment Flow Design
The biggest change was replacing the single complex enrollment form with a step-by-step flow. Instead of one form with nearly 20 required fields, we designed a simpler experience that walked students through one to two questions at a time. Beyond the enrollment flow, DAP built a full design system that was applied across DeVry’s entire digital presence.
- Replaced one 20-field form with a step-by-step experience of one to two actions per screen
- Minimized distractions and competing navigation within the enrollment flow
- Modeled the experience after familiar consumer workflows
- Redesigned homepage, program pages, and the logged-in student experience
- Built a complete design system with components, typography, and spacing rules applied across all digital properties
Content Strategy and Landing Page Architecture
We built landing pages across PPC campaigns, conversion paths, and program pages throughout the DeVry site. Each page was structured around student intent, not institutional priorities.
- Built landing pages across PPC campaigns and conversion paths
- Structured each page around student intent rather than institutional priorities
- Focused content strategy on reducing cognitive load
- Created clear pathways from awareness to enrollment
- Aligned landing page messaging with campaign-specific audience segments
Analytics Infrastructure and A/B Testing
DAP implemented the analytics infrastructure that allowed DeVry to see what was actually happening and iterate based on evidence rather than opinion.
- Implemented Microsoft Clarity to observe real user behavior
- Developed full analytics strategy and tagging plan with GA goal tracking
- Created unified dashboards for leadership to measure marketing ROI
- Ran A/B tests on field count, question order, and reassurance language
- Shifted DeVry from quarterly release cycles to live iteration within weeks
What we Achieved
The progressive enrollment flow delivered immediate impact. Form submissions increased 20% within the first week of launch. By the end of year one, submissions had increased 56%. These gains held on the primary enrollment path, confirming that a simpler process leads to more completed applications.
Nearly 1,000 additional students enrolled as a direct result of improvements to the digital enrollment experience. These were actual enrolled students who completed the full process and joined DeVry programs.
DAP reversed five years of enrollment decline within six months. The team focused on fixing the broken enrollment flow first rather than overhauling everything at once, which made the results clear early and earned buy-in for broader changes. The partnership lasted 18 months until DeVry’s internal team could manage it independently. DeVry still uses the step-by-step enrollment flow that DAP built to convert prospective students today.
