Case Study: Penn Foster improves site search and boosts CTR with SearchStax

Penn Foster Upgrades Site Search to Deliver a Seamless Online Experience

Penn Foster, a long-established higher education institution, needed to improve site search during a website refresh while keeping the project on schedule and on budget. As a content-rich site with many prospective students depending on it for program details, FAQs, and other resources, Penn Foster wanted search to reduce friction, surface the right content, and support enrollments. The company was already using SearchStax Managed Search and evaluated SearchStax Site Search as a way to add more advanced capabilities without a large internal development effort.

SearchStax implemented Site Search for Penn Foster, tightly integrated with Sitecore and supported by the SearchStax UI app to speed deployment and give marketing more control. The new solution delivered cost savings, greater agility, and search analytics with visibility into metrics like searches, impressions, CTR, and no-result queries. Most notably, Penn Foster’s click-through rate grew 14% year over year after the SearchStax Site Search implementation.

Penn Foster

Chad Smith

Senior Application Developer