# Guilford College — Navigation Consolidation Plan

**Engagement:** Guilford College — Drupal 11 facelift / UX refresh
**Deliverable:** Sub-navigation audit & consolidation recommendation
**Prepared by:** Ellis Agency · **Date:** July 2026
**Status:** Adopted — this structure is now built into the Concept G and Concept H comps for review.

---

## 1. Executive summary

Guilford's primary navigation ("mega-menu") drop-downs are **long, flat, and alphabetical** — 13 to 16 links each under **Academics**, **Admission & Aid**, **Life at Guilford**, and **Who We Are**. Two problems compound:

1. **Redundancy with the hub pages.** A large share of the items in each drop-down are *also* surfaced as cards/links on that section's landing ("hub") page. The drop-down is doing the hub page's job — twice.
2. **Mixed content in one flat list.** Each menu blends primary tasks, niche interior pages, audience paths (High School / Transfer / Veteran…), transactional tools (Registrar, Student Accounts), and links to **external, non-Drupal systems** (course catalog, athletics, bookstore, a Google Site) — with no grouping or hierarchy.

**Recommendation:** Treat the drop-down as a **curated shortlist (6–8 links max), not a sitemap.** Move hub-redundant, niche, transactional, and external-system links *out* of the drop-down and let the **hub page be the complete index**. Group what remains, and route audience paths through the homepage "For You" bar rather than repeating them in every menu.

Applied across the four sections, this takes **~57 drop-down links down to ~26** — a **~55% reduction** — with no content lost (everything remains one click away on the hub page or in the footer).

---

## 2. How we audited this

We pulled the **live guilford.edu** mega-menu for each section and compared it, link by link, against the links that already appear in the **body of that section's hub landing page**. Any drop-down item that is already promoted on the hub page is a **redundancy candidate** — it can leave the top nav without becoming harder to find.

We then classified every remaining item by type (primary task, audience path, interior/niche page, transactional tool, external system) to find the second tier of consolidation opportunities.

> This is a public-site audit. Final counts should be validated against Drupal's real menu config + Google Analytics (which items actually get clicked) once admin/GA access lands — see §9.

---

## 3. Consolidation levers (the "options")

Six moves, in priority order. Each section below applies a mix.

| # | Lever | What it does |
|---|-------|--------------|
| **A** | **De-duplicate against the hub** | Remove drop-down items already featured on the hub page. The hub becomes the full index; the menu becomes a shortcut. *(This is the specific ask.)* |
| **B** | **Group, don't just list** | Replace the flat alphabetical list with 2–3 labeled clusters (e.g., *Programs · Experience · Resources*). Same links, far lower cognitive load. |
| **C** | **Demote external / non-Drupal systems** | Catalog, athletics, bookstore, calendar, library, Google-Sites pages belong in a hub "Quick links" strip or the footer — not the primary academic menu. |
| **D** | **Route audiences, don't list them** | High School / Transfer / International / Veteran / Graduate / Adult are *audiences*, not nav items. Send them through the homepage "For You" bar + one "Which student are you?" block on the Admission hub. |
| **E** | **Cap the menu at 6–8 links** | Long menus aren't scanned. Curate to the highest-traffic, highest-intent links; everything else lives on the hub. |
| **F** | **Merge near-duplicates** | e.g., three separate financial-aid links → one "Financial Aid" group; "High School Students" + "High School & Independent Counselors" → one. |

---

## 4. Section-by-section audit & recommendation

Legend — **Action:** `KEEP` (stays in the slimmed menu) · `HUB` (remove from menu; already/also on the hub page) · `QUICK-LINKS/FOOTER` (external system or transactional → demote) · `MERGE` (fold into a group) · `AUDIENCE` (route via the "For You" bar).

### 4.1 Academics — 16 links → 6

| Drop-down item | Also on hub? | Action | Why |
|---|:---:|---|---|
| Majors and Minors (`/program-finder`) | ✓ | **KEEP** | The #1 academics task. |
| Departments and Centers | | **KEEP** | Primary browse path. |
| Hands-On Learning | ✓ | **KEEP** | Signature brand story. |
| Guilford College Rise (`/RISE`) | ✓ | **KEEP** | Flagship program — relabelled **High School Programs** in the menu, which is what prospective families are actually looking for. |
| Ethical Leadership | | **KEEP** | Differentiator (Principled Problem Solving). |
| College Catalog (external) | | **KEEP** (as "Catalog ↗") | High-intent, but flag as external. |
| Your First Year Experience | ✓ | HUB | Already featured on the hub. |
| General Education | | HUB | Curricular detail → interior page. |
| Honors Program | ✓ | HUB | Niche; on the hub. |
| Global at Guilford (external) | | QUICK-LINKS | Lives in the catalog system. |
| Summer School | | HUB | Seasonal/niche. |
| Academic Resources | ✓ | HUB | Student-facing; on the hub. |
| Accessibility Resource Center | ✓ | HUB | Support service; on the hub + footer. |
| Hege Academic Commons / Library | | QUICK-LINKS | Destination site → quick-links/footer. |
| Registrar | | FOOTER | Transactional; current-student → footer / Current-Students hub. |
| Student Accounts | | FOOTER | Transactional; current-student → footer / Current-Students hub. |

**Proposed Academics menu (grouped):**
*Study* — Majors & Minors · Departments & Centers · College Catalog ↗
*Experience* — Hands-On Learning · High School Programs · Ethical Leadership
*+ "See all academics →"* linking the hub.

### 4.2 Admission & Aid — 13 links → 7

| Drop-down item | Also on hub? | Action | Why |
|---|:---:|---|---|
| Apply to Guilford | ✓ | **KEEP** | The primary conversion. |
| Request Information *(add if missing)* | | **KEEP** | Primary conversion. |
| Financial Aid and Costs | ✓ | **KEEP** (group head) | Merge the aid trio here. |
| Tuition and Fees | | MERGE → Financial Aid | Sub-page of aid. |
| How to Apply for Aid | ✓ | MERGE → Financial Aid | Sub-page of aid. |
| The Guilford Commitment | ✓ | **KEEP** | Signature affordability promise. |
| Admission Team | ✓ | **KEEP** | Counselor connection = enrollment. |
| High School Students | ✓ | AUDIENCE | Route via "For You" / one Admission block. |
| Transfer Students | ✓ | AUDIENCE | " |
| International Students | ✓ | AUDIENCE | " |
| Veterans | ✓ | AUDIENCE | " |
| Graduate School | ✓ | AUDIENCE | " |
| Continuing Education (Adult) | ✓ | AUDIENCE | " |
| High School & Independent Counselors | | MERGE → Admission Team | Near-duplicate of the counselor path. |

**Proposed Admission menu:** Apply · Request Info · Visit · **Financial Aid** (Costs · Tuition · How to Apply) · The Guilford Commitment · Admission Team — with a single **"Which student are you?"** row (HS · Transfer · International · Veteran · Graduate · Adult) instead of six separate menu lines.

### 4.3 Life at Guilford — 15 links → 6

| Drop-down item | Also on hub? | Action | Why |
|---|:---:|---|---|
| Living and Eating (Housing + Dining) | ✓ | **KEEP** | Core residential-life task. |
| Health and Safety | | **KEEP** | High-need. |
| The Arts | | **KEEP** | Signature experience. |
| Sports / Athletics | | **KEEP** (as "Athletics ↗") | High interest; external site. |
| Student Media | ✓ | **KEEP** | Distinctive. |
| Calendar of Events | ✓ | QUICK-LINKS | Utility; already global + on hub. |
| Student Life (Google Site) | ✓ | HUB | Clubs/orgs live off-Drupal; feature on hub. |
| First-Gen at Guilford | | HUB | Audience/support → hub. |
| Guilford Stories and Videos | | HUB | Content collection → hub. |
| International Student Services | | HUB | Support; also under Admission. |
| Commencement | | FOOTER | Seasonal event. |
| Bookstore (external) | | QUICK-LINKS/FOOTER | Retail system. |
| Faculty and Staff News | | FOOTER | Wrong audience for this menu. |
| Title IX and Equal Opportunity | | FOOTER | Compliance → global footer. |
| Student Life (Google Site, dup) | ✓ | MERGE | Duplicate entry. |

### 4.4 Who We Are — 13 links → 7

| Drop-down item | Also on hub? | Action | Why |
|---|:---:|---|---|
| History and Quaker Roots | ✓ | **KEEP** | Core identity. |
| Core Values | ✓ | **KEEP** | Core identity. |
| College Leadership | | **KEEP** | Expected "about" item. |
| Facts and Figures | | **KEEP** | High-intent for prospects/press. |
| Faculty & Staff Directory | | **KEEP** (as "Directory ↗") | High-traffic utility. |
| Social Responsibility | ✓ | **KEEP** | Signature commitment. |
| Guilford College Magazine | | **KEEP** | Alumni/engagement. |
| Friends Center | ✓ | HUB | Sub-topic of Quaker identity. |
| Office of Transformation & Inclusion | | HUB | Department → hub / directory. |
| Office of the Provost | | FOOTER | Internal office. |
| Office of Communications & Marketing | | FOOTER | Internal office. |
| Greater Greensboro Consortium | | FOOTER | Niche partner. |
| Greensboro | | MERGE | Fold into Facts/About-the-place or Life menu. |

---

## 5. Before / after at a glance

| Section | Live drop-down links | Proposed | Change |
|---|:---:|:---:|:---:|
| Academics | 16 | 6 | −10 |
| Admission & Aid | 13 | 7 | −6 |
| Life at Guilford | 15 | 6 | −9 |
| Who We Are | 13 | 7 | −6 |
| **Total** | **57** | **~26** | **≈ −55%** |

*No content is removed from the site* — demoted links remain on the hub page, in a hub "Quick links" strip, in the footer, or (for audiences) in the "For You" bar.

---

## 6. Proposed final top navigation

Here is the structure the four menus would house after the plan above — grouped, ~6–8 links each, audience paths routed through a single row, and systems / transactional pages moved to the footer or hub quick-links.

### Academics (6 links)

- **Study** — Majors & Minors · Departments & Centers · College Catalog ↗ (`catalog.guilford.edu`)
- **Experience** — Hands-On Learning · High School Programs · Ethical Leadership
- *See all academics →* (hub)

### Admission & Aid (7 links)

- **Apply** — Apply Now · Request Information · Schedule a Visit
- **Cost & aid** — Financial Aid (Costs · Tuition · How to Apply) · The Guilford Commitment · Admission Team
- **Which student are you?** — High School · Transfer · International · Veteran · Graduate · Adult *(one routed row, not six menu lines)*
- *See all admission & aid →* (hub)

### Life at Guilford (6 links)

- **Live & belong** — Living & Eating · Health & Safety · Clubs & Organizations
- **Experience** — The Arts · Student Media · Athletics ↗ (`guilfordquakers.com`)
- *See all of student life →* (hub)

### Who We Are (7 links)

- **Identity** — History & Quaker Roots · Core Values · Social Responsibility
- **The college** — College Leadership · Facts & Figures · Guilford College Magazine · Faculty & Staff Directory ↗
- *See all →* (hub)

**Moved out of the drop-downs — still one click away:**

- **Footer / quick-links —** Registrar · Student Accounts · Library (Hege) · Calendar · Bookstore · Title IX · Office of the Provost · Communications & Marketing · Greater Greensboro Consortium · Commencement.
- **On the hub pages —** First-Year Experience · General Education · Honors Program · Summer School · Academic Resources · Accessibility Resource Center · Friends Center · Transformation & Inclusion · First-Gen · Stories & Videos.
- **"For You" bar —** the six Admission audiences (High School, Transfer, International, Veteran, Graduate, Adult).

The utility strip is unchanged (Current Students · Faculty & Staff · Alumni · Parents · Directory · Calendar · Give a Gift), and the global header actions — **Apply · Give · Search** — stay put.

---

## 7. Design principles to lock in

- **The menu is a shortcut, the hub is the index.** If a link is prominently on the hub, it doesn't also need to be in the drop-down.
- **6–8 links per menu, grouped** into 2–3 labeled clusters.
- **Owned pages in the nav; systems in quick-links/footer** (catalog, athletics, bookstore, calendar, library).
- **Audiences are routed, not listed** — one "For You" bar + one hub block, not six menu lines each.
- **One home per link.** Kill duplicates and near-duplicates (the two "Student Life" entries; the three financial-aid entries; two high-school entries).
- **Consistency across all four menus** — same grouping pattern, same "See all →" hub link, same treatment for external ↗ links.

---

## 8. SEO — protecting rankings through the nav change

Consolidating the menus changes the site's internal-link graph, so the SEO work below runs **in parallel with the build and ships before/with launch** — not after. A nav change made without it risks orphaned pages and lost rankings on deep, high-value pages.

**1 · Redirects (301s).** Removing a link from a menu needs *no* redirect — the page still lives at its URL. Redirects apply only where consolidation **changes or merges a URL**. Build a 301 map for: the merged financial-aid pages (Costs / Tuition / How-to-Apply → one Financial Aid parent, if URLs change); the duplicate "High School" and "Student Life" entries collapsing to one canonical URL; and the "Majors & Minors" → `/program-finder` canonicalization. Also fix the known `/news` canonical-index path flagged in the page-type inventory. External links (catalog, athletics, bookstore) get no redirect — they're not ours.

**2 · Internal linking & orphan prevention.** Fewer nav links means fewer sitewide internal links to demoted pages, which lowers their crawl priority and link equity. Mitigate: every demoted page keeps **at least one internal link** — from its hub page (contextual), the footer/quick-links, or a "See all →" index. Run an orphan audit after launch: zero demoted pages with no internal link. Never strip internal links from a top-traffic / top-ranking page (financial aid, majors, apply) without a compensating contextual link.

**3 · XML sitemap & Search Console.** Regenerate and resubmit the XML sitemap — demoted pages stay in it (they're not deleted). Submit any changed URLs, then monitor Coverage, Crawl Stats, and Performance for the demoted/deep pages for 4–6 weeks. A brief impressions dip on deep pages is normal; confirm they hold rankings via hub linking.

**4 · Structured data & crawlable markup.** Update `SiteNavigationElement` and `BreadcrumbList` structured data to the new structure, and confirm breadcrumbs still resolve for demoted pages. Keep every nav link a real, crawlable `<a href>` in the HTML (not JS-only) — the mega-menu and the "See all" hub links must expose the full crawl path in source.

**5 · Measurement.** Add event tracking to the new nav so click data validates the consolidation, and annotate the launch date in GA4. Compare pre/post organic traffic and rankings on the affected page set, and keep a rollback note for any page that loses position.

> **Sequencing:** the SEO specialist finalizes the redirect map + internal-linking audit **before** the nav goes live, and the redirects ship with launch.

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## 9. Decisions & dependencies for the client

1. **Confirm the "keep" list per menu.** The keeps above are our recommendation; the client owns final calls on political/ownership-sensitive items (e.g., which offices appear).
2. **Validate against analytics.** Pull GA on the current mega-menu links — low-click items are the easiest cuts; high-click items must stay regardless of hub redundancy. *(Depends on GA access.)*
3. **Confirm the Drupal menu model.** Whether these are one menu or several, and whether "audience routing" is feasible with the current menu system.
4. **Redirect plan.** Any URL changes from consolidation go through the SEO specialist **before** launch (redirects + sitemap).
5. **External-system inventory.** Finalize which links are non-Drupal (→ Quick-links/footer + the T6 brand frame): catalog, athletics, bookstore, the Google-Sites student-life page.

**Next step:** on client sign-off of the "keep" lists, we mock the six-link grouped drop-downs into the redesign comps (Concept G/H) and hand the redirect map to SEO.

---

## 8. SEO notes — implemented navigation changes (updated 2026-07-21)

The Concept G build (guilford2026 theme, `ellislabs-theme` branch) has now implemented navigation
behavior that SEO must account for. Status of each, and what the SEO specialist needs to do:

### 8.1 What shipped

- **M06 menu changes (live in the build):** utility strip reduced to the concept seven (Current
  Students · Faculty & Staff · Alumni · Parents · Directory · Calendar · Give a Gift — dropped
  items *disabled, not deleted*, all still linked in the footer); top-level external **Athletics ↗**
  added to the main nav; "Admission and Aid" retitled **"Admission & Aid"**. The full 6-link
  grouped drop-downs from §4 still await the client "keep" list (§7.1).
- **Hub sub-navigation is now a client-side section switcher (SPA).** On hub pages
  (/academics, /admissions, /studentlife, /who-we-are, /visit) the row of section links under the
  hero fetches the target page's CMS content and swaps it below the sub-nav without a full page
  load. The URL updates via `history.pushState` to the section's own canonical path; the fetched
  section's hero/billboard, breadcrumbs and CTA band are stripped client-side so only body content
  renders inside the hub frame. "Overview" restores the hub's own sections.
- **New public news index at `/news`** (was a 404 behind a stale 301) — T3 listing, 12/page.

### 8.2 Why this is SEO-safe by construction

- Sub-nav links are **real `<a href>` elements** pointing at the sections' canonical URLs — link
  equity, crawl paths, middle-click and no-JS behavior are identical to normal navigation.
- Section pages remain **fully server-rendered standalone pages** at their canonical URLs with
  their own heroes, titles, metatags and breadcrumbs. Crawlers (which don't run the switcher) see
  exactly what a direct visitor sees — **no cloaking**: the hero-stripping happens only in the
  client-side swapped view, and the same HTML is served to bots and users.
- Canonical URLs are unchanged throughout; the hub swap navigates *to* the section's canonical.

### 8.3 SEO/analytics follow-ups required

1. **GTM History Change trigger** — SPA swaps do not fire a conventional pageview. Enable the
   History Change trigger (or `page_view` on push) for guilford.edu in GTM-5BZ4942 and verify
   deduplication against normal navigations **before cutover**.
2. **`document.title` on swap** — ✅ IMPLEMENTED 2026-07-21 (theme nav.js 1.8.g26): the
   switcher now sets `document.title` from the fetched page's `<title>` on each swap, and
   pushes a `dataLayer` event `g26_section_view` with `page_path` + `page_title`. GTM can
   fire the virtual pageview off this event OR the History Change trigger (item 1) — pick
   ONE and verify dedupe before cutover.
3. **Sitemap**: add `/news` (new indexable page); confirm the removed stale `/news` 301
   (redirect entity rid 1731, deleted) is reflected in any redirect exports.
4. **News placement**: decide where `/news` earns a nav/footer home (§4 keep-lists) — currently
   reachable from homepage "View All News" and article breadcrumbs only.
5. **§7.4 redirect plan unchanged** — no URL changes shipped; consolidation demotions (when the
   keep lists land) still route through the redirect map process.

### 8.4 Nav change log (running)

- **2026-07-27 — §6 consolidated navigation IMPLEMENTED in Drupal (guilford2026 theme).**
  New curated `g26-meganav` menu drives the desktop drop-downs (25 links, grouped, audience
  row, "See all" hub hand-offs); the **main menu is untouched** — it still powers the hub
  section navs, breadcrumbs, sitemap and mobile drawer, so demoted links keep crawlable
  homes and **no URLs changed** (no redirects needed). "Visit" demoted from the top level
  (still linked from hero CTAs, audience bar, Admission & Aid → Schedule a Visit, footer).
  Utility "Give a Gift" disabled (Give button + footer cover giving). SEO: drop-down link
  equity concentrates on the 25 curated targets; full index remains one click away on hubs.
- **2026-07-21 — "News" added to the main menu** as a child of *Life at Guilford* → `/news`
  (deploy hook 0007). SEO: gives the new news index an internal navigation home (crawl path +
  link equity); no URL changes; the mega-menu gains one item — include in the §4 Life at
  Guilford keep-list when finalized. Sitemap addition for `/news` still applies (§8.3.3).