DeSales University Earns Silver in 41st Annual Education Advertising Awards for Website Refresh
DeSales University has received a Silver Award in the Website Refresh category in the 41st Annual Education Advertising Awards, recognizing the university’s recent website redesign and re-platforming project.
The Educational Advertising Awards is the largest educational advertising awards competition in the country. This year, over 2,000 entries were received from more than one thousand colleges, universities, and secondary schools representing all fifty states. Judges for the competition included a national panel of higher education marketers, advertising creative directors, and marketing and advertising professionals.
The award recognized the collaborative work behind DeSales’ recently redesigned website, a project led by David Oblas M’24, director of web strategy, in partnership with digital agency Beacon Technologies and DeSales web designer Amy Bolger-Santucci, who has since been promoted to assistant director of undergraduate marketing.
The redesign represents months of research, planning, and creative development. Working closely with Beacon Technologies, the DeSales marketing team conducted extensive research into emerging trends and best practices in higher education websites to better understand how prospective students and families engage with university content online.
The team them moved through multiple rounds of design exploration and refinement, focusing on creating a modern user experience while differentiating DeSales from its competitors in the higher education space. The result was a refreshed digital presence that better reflects the university’s brand, improved usability, and support key enrollment and engagement goals.
“We’re incredibly proud of how the new site came together. It was the result of months of collaboration, research, and thoughtful design decisions,” said Bolger-Santucci. “Seeing it recognized nationally is a great reflection of the work our team and partners put into creating something that will serve the university well for years to come.”
The project required thousands of hours of collaboration across research, design, development, and content strategy to ensure the final product delivered both a modern aesthetic and a stronger experience for prospective students, families, and the broader DeSales community.