Challenge: BU wanted to better understand student readership behaviors related to BU news and information, ultimately to increase student readership of BU Today.

Objective: To increase the number of students who read and get information from the publication.

Solution: Plan-it conducted multiple exploratory discussion groups among full-time BU students split into lowerclassmen and upperclassmen. Students provided in-depth feedback on the relevance/interest generated by the content, section titles/descriptions, photos/visuals and layout/flow, as well as impact of the paper’s email alert headlines.

Result: Plan-it provided insight into reasons and barriers to reading the online paper, and made numerous content, layout and tactical recommendations to motivate more students to read and receive information from BU Today.