Attracting Faculty and Staff to a Top-Tier University's Residential Communities

The Service Request

Stanford Faculty Staff Housing (FSH) initially approached Project6 to update the website for its flagship community, Stanford West Apartments. The site needed to both attract incoming faculty and staff as well as support existing residents. Long-term, FSH wanted each of its communities to have a separate—but similarly branded—online presence. In addition to a scalable visual system, Stanford FSH was also looking for a site structure and functionality that could support communities that ranged in size and complexity. Stanford also set exceptionally high security and compliance standards, so commerce development and accessibility requirements were rigorous.

Putting FSH on the Map

Near-term, Project6 designed a single website while keeping in mind that it was just the first piece of a robust brand system. The navigation was intuitive to both primary audiences, allowing prospects to browse and gain all the information they needed, as well as enabling existing residents to view community updates, order items online from corner store (pre-pandemic!), and make detailed reservations for the facility clubhouse. We also created flexible design elements that could be used or omitted based on the content requirements across the different sites. We designed the logo of the individual community as well as the parent FSH mark.

Welcome Home

The resulting open-source Drupal website was an immediate success with prospects, residents, and site administrators. Stanford FSH quickly proposed building the sister sites: Stanford Cardinal Apartments, Stanford Colonnade Apartments, Stanford Middle Plaza Apartments, Stanford Oak Creek Apartments, Stanford Rental Homes, and Stanford Welch Road Apartments. The sites feature enticing, high-resolution imagery, and a consistent brand palette and graphic elements. All seven sites feel closely related while still highlighting the unique feel of their individual communities. All websites are easy for administrators to edit and maintain. Technical updates are efficient due to the related elements across the family of sites. Over the course of nearly a decade, Project6 has built, helped evolve, and maintained these websites, serving as a trusted online advisor to the Stanford FSH team.

This work reinforces our continuing goal to support the education sector. Could we be a good fit for your University or College? Explore our other projects in education.