Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is making organizations scramble — our clients have been asking “Are we ready for the new ways LLMs crawl, index, and return content to users? Does our site support evolving GEO best practices? What can we do to boost results and citations?”
Large language models (LLMs) and the services that power AI summaries don’t “think” like humans but they do perform similar actions. They seek content, split it into memorable chunks, and rank the chunks for trust and accuracy. If pages use semantic HTML, include facts and cite sources, and include structured metadata, AI crawlers and retrieval systems will find, store, and reproduce content accurately. That improves your chance of being cited correctly in AI overviews.
While GEO has disrupted the way people use search engines, the fundamentals of SEO and digital accessibility continue to be strong indicators of content performance in LLM search results. Making content understandable, usable, and memorable for humans also has benefits for LLMs and GEO.
How LLM systems (and AI-driven overviews) get their facts
Understanding how LLMs crawl, process, and retrieve web content helps us understand why semantic structure and accessibility best practices have a positive effect. When an AI system generates an answer that cites the web, several distinct back-end steps usually happen:
- Crawling — Bots visit URLs and download page content. Some crawlers execute javascript like a browser (Googlebot) while others prefer raw HTML and limit their rendering.
- Chunking — Large documents are split into small, logical “chunks” of paragraphs, sections, or other units. These chunks are the pieces that are later retrieved for an answer. How a page’s content is structured with headings, paragraphs, and lists determines the likely chunk boundaries for storage.
- Vectorization — Each chunk is then converted into a numeric vector that captures its semantic meaning. These embeddings live in a vector database and enable systems to find chunks quickly. The quality of the vector depends on the clarity of the chunk’s text.
- Indexing — Systems will store additional metadata (URL, title, headings, metadata) to filter and rank results. Structured data like schema metadata is especially valuable.
- Retrieval — A user asks a question or performs a search and the system retrieves the most semantically similar chunks via a vector search. It re-ranks those chunks using metadata and other signals and then composes its answer while citing sources (sometimes).
The Case for Human-Accessible Content
There are many more reasons why digital accessibility is simply the right thing to do. It turns out that in addition to boosting SEO, accessibility best practices help LLMs crawl, chunk, store, and retrieve content more accurately.
During retrieval, small errors like missing text, ambiguous links, or poor heading order can fail to expose the best chunks. Let’s dive into how this can happen and what common accessibility pitfalls contribute to the confusion.
For Content Teams — Authors, Writers, Editors

Lack of descriptive “alt” text
While some LLMs can employ machine-vision techniques to “see” images as a human would, descriptive alt text verifies what they are seeing and the context in which the image is relevant. The same best practices for describing images for people will help LLMs accurately understand the content.

Out-of-order heading structures
Similar to semantic HTML, headings provide a clear outline of a page. Machines (and screen readers!) use heading structure to understand hierarchy and context. When a heading level skips from an <h2>
to an <h4>
, an LLM may fail to determine the proper relationship between content chunks. During retrieval, the model’s understanding is dictated by the flawed structure, not the content’s intrinsic importance. (Source: research thesis PDF, “Investigating Large Language Models ability to evaluate heading-related accessibility barriers”)

Descriptive and unique links
All of the accessibility barriers surrounding poor link practices affect how LLMs evaluate their importance. Link text is a short textual signal that is vectorized to make proper retrieval possible. Vague link text like “Click here” or “Learn More” does not provide valuable signals. In fact, the same “Learn More” text multiple times on a page can dilute the signals for the URLs they point to.
Using the same link text for more than one destination URLs creates a knowledge conflict. Like people, an LLM is subject to “anchoring bias,” which means it is likely to overweight the first link it processes and underweight or ignore the second, since they both have the same text signal.
Example of the duplicate link problem: <a href=“[URL-A]”>Duplicate Link Text</a>
, and then later in the same article, <a href=“[URL-B]”>Duplicate Link Text</a>
. Conversely, when the same URL is used more than once on a page, the same link text should be repeated exactly.

Logical order and readable content
Simple, direct sentences (one fact per sentence) produce cleaner embeddings for LLM retrieval. Human accessibility best practices of plain language and clear structure are the same practices that improve chunking and indexing for LLMs
For Technical Teams — IT, Developers, Engineers

Poorly structured semantic HTML
Semantic elements (<article>
, <nav>
, <main>
, <h1>
, etc.) add context and suggest relative ranking weight. They make content boundaries explicit, which helps retrieval systems isolate your content from less important elements like ad slots or lists of related articles.

Lack of schema
This is technical and under the hood of your human-readable content. Machines love additional context and structured schema data is how facts are declared in code — product names, prices, event dates, authors, etc. Search engines have used schema for rich results and LLMs are no different. Right now, server-rendered schema data will guarantee the widest visibility, as not all crawlers execute client-side Javascript completely.
How to make accessibility even more actionable
The work of digital accessibility is often pushed to the bottom of the priority list. But once again, there are additional ways to frame this work as high value. While this work is beneficial for SEO, our recent research uncovers that it continues to be impactful in the new and evolving world of GEO.
If you need to frame an argument to those that control the investments of time and money, some talking points are:
- Accurate brand representation — Poor accessibility hides facts from LLMs. When customers ask an AI assistant for “best X for Y,” your content may not be shown — or worse, misrepresented. Fixing accessibility reduces brand risk and increases content authority.
- Engagement boost — Improvements that increase accurate citations and AI visibility can increase referral traffic, feature mentions, and lead quality. In a landscape where AI Answers are reducing click-through rates, keeping the traffic you have on your site for longer and building brand trust becomes vital.
- Increased exposure — Digital inclusion makes your content widely accessible to machines and the machines that assist humans. Think about a search engine as another human-assistive device, just like a keyboard or screen reader.
- Multi-pronged benefits — Accessibility improvement improves traditional SEO, can benefit mobile performance, and reduces the risks associated with accessibility compliance policies.
Staying steady in the storm
Let’s be clear — this summer was a “generative AI search freak out.” Content teams have scrambled to get smart about LLM-powered search quickly while search providers rolled out new tools and updates weekly. It’s been a tough ride in a rough sea of constant change.
To counter all that, know that the fundamentals are still strong. If your team has been using accessibility as a measure for content effectiveness and SEO discoverability, don’t stop now. If you haven’t yet started, this is one more reason to apply these principles tomorrow.
If you continue to have questions within this rapidly evolving landscape, talk to us about your questions around SEO, GEO, content strategy, and accessibility conformance. Ask about our training and documentation available for content teams.
Additional Reading
- AHREFs.com: Is SEO Dead? Real Data vs. Internet Hysteria
- SearchEngineJournal.com: How LLMs Interpret Content: How To Structure Information For AI Search
- InclusionHub.com: SEO and Web Accessibility: What You Need to Know (from 2020, but still relevant)
As a digital services firm partnering with destination marketing organizations (DMOs) across the U.S., we’re helping teams navigate what’s already proving to be a volatile 2025—especially on the inbound side. Analysis from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) projects a stark reality: the U.S. economy will miss out on $12.5 billion in international visitor spending this year, with inbound spend expected to dip to just under $169B, down from $181B in 2024. Even more concerning, the U.S. is the only country among 184 economies in WTTC’s study forecast to see an inbound-spend decline this year.
While external market forces remain largely beyond control, we’ve identified three strategic areas where DMOs can focus their digital platforms to weather this storm and continue demonstrating measurable demand to their partners.
1. Transform Content Into Action-Driving Experiences
Why this strategic shift matters now
With inbound spend shrinking by $12.5B and key feeder markets weakening, undecided travelers need clarity and confidence to choose your destination. Content that reduces uncertainty and highlights immediate value converts better than generic inspiration.
Strategic implementation approach
Activate “Go Now” signals. Combine always-on inspiration with time-sensitive reasons to visit—shoulder-season value, midweek deals, cooling weather breaks—strategically mapped to the soft periods your analytics reveal.
Elevate discovery through intelligent architecture. Curate SEO-optimized content hubs organized by Themes (outdoors, arts, culinary) and Moments (fall colors, winter lights). Implement structured data (FAQ, Event, Attraction) with strategic internal linking architecture so travelers find relevant options fast.
Deploy micro-itineraries for immediate conversion. Design 24–48-hour “micro-itins” featuring embedded maps, transit and parking guidance, and seamless handoffs to bookable partners. Partnering with platforms like MindTrip reduces content team effort while accelerating output—a strategy that’s proven particularly effective for our DMO clients facing resource constraints.
Authority-driven event content optimization. Event pages generate the highest intent traffic. Enhance them with rich media, last-minute planning resources, and strategic “if sold-out, try this” alternatives.
Transparent value communication. Feature free experiences prominently, implement intuitive budget filters, and deploy “Best Time to Visit” calendars comparing crowds and pricing by week and month. Transparency builds trust, and trust drives conversion.
2. Build Your Competitive Moat Through Data-Driven Audience Cultivation
Your first-party data represents your most defensible competitive advantage. As platform targeting becomes increasingly constrained and inbound spending softens, DMOs that build and activate their own audience will capture attention far more efficiently than those relying solely on paid channels.
Strategic audience development
Implement high-intent capture everywhere. Deploy contextual email and SMS prompts across high-intent templates—events, itineraries, trip planners, partner directories. Offer valuable micro-perks like exclusive maps and early event alerts.
Master progressive profiling. Collect visitor preferences—season, interests, party type, origin market—over multiple touchpoints rather than overwhelming users with lengthy initial forms.
Create actionable audience segments. Develop cohorts around 2025’s market realities: last-minute planners, shoulder-season seekers, road-trippers, value hunters, family weekenders, and meetings planners.
Future-proof attribution systems. Combine GA4 with server-side tagging and standardized UTM schemas for every partner handoff. Track outbound clicks, partner session quality, itinerary saves and usage, offer redemptions, and newsletter-driven sessions. This comprehensive approach ensures you maintain visibility into conversion paths as third-party cookies disappear.
Deploy trend-driven editorial strategy. Develop weekly dashboards blending organic query trends, on-site search terms, partner click-through rates, and feeder-market signals. When interest dips in one market, pivot homepage modules and paid social toward value and itinerary content targeting more resilient markets.
3. Transform Partner Relationships Through Measurable Value Delivery
In a softening inbound environment where domestic spending carries approximately 90% of the economic load, your partners need two critical elements: qualified attention and proof of conversion. Your website should function as the region’s premier meta-directory and conversion engine.
Experience optimization strategies
Enable one-click handoffs with context preservation. Pass user filters—dates, neighborhoods, price ranges—directly into partner sites and booking engines while preserving state if travelers return.
Deploy persistent trip planning tools. Allow users to save places and generate shareable itineraries with intelligent handoffs: “Book these two hotels,” “Reserve rentals,” “Get festival passes.”
Create compelling partner storefronts. Develop rich partner profiles featuring availability widgets, authentic reviews, social proof, and clear calls-to-action.
Implement strategic co-op modules. Design paid placements that provide value rather than feeling like advertisements: “Local Favorites” carousels, sponsor highlights, seasonal deal tiles—rotated by audience cohort and season. This generates additional revenue while maintaining user experience quality.
Establish closed-loop reporting systems. Standardize UTM tracking, monitor outbound events, and where permitted, implement partner pixels and offer codes to report assisted conversions by category and campaign. Partners need proof of ROI, and data-driven reporting builds stronger, more profitable relationships.
How Oomph Can Accelerate Your Success
If you’re experiencing softer international interest, shorter booking windows, or declining partner satisfaction, you’re facing the same challenges as DMOs nationwide. The organizations pulling ahead aren’t waiting for market recovery—they’re strengthening their digital platforms through strategic content optimization, systematic audience cultivation, and demonstrable partner value creation.
Our proven methodology transforms these challenges into competitive advantages.
We’ll conduct a comprehensive audit of your digital platform against these three strategic pillars, quantify immediate optimization opportunities, and provide your partners with what they need most: qualified, measurable demand. The market headwinds are real, but the right strategic approach can help you maintain resilience and emerge stronger when conditions improve. Let’s navigate these challenges together.
One question we frequently hear from clients, especially those managing web content, is “How can we implement accessibility best practices without breaking the bank or overwhelming our editorial team?”
It’s a valid concern. As a content editor, you’re navigating the daily challenge of maintaining quality while meeting deadlines and managing competing priorities.
When your team decides to prioritize website accessibility, the initial scope can feel daunting. You might wonder “Does this really make a difference?” or “Is remediation worth the effort?” The answer is always a resounding yes.
Whether you’re working on a small site or managing thousands of pages, accessible content improves user experience, ensures legal compliance, boosts SEO performance, and reinforces your brand as inclusive and responsible. As a content editor, you have the power to make steady, meaningful progress with the content you touch every day.
Why Accessibility Creates Business Impact
Accessible content delivers measurable outcomes across multiple business objectives:
Expanded Market Reach: When your content is inaccessible to users with disabilities, you’re limiting your potential audience. Consider that disabilities can be temporary, like a broken arm, and 70% of seniors are now online—a demographic that often benefits from accessible design principles.
Risk Mitigation: Inaccessible websites can lead to legal complaints under the ADA and other regulations, creating both financial and reputational risks.
Enhanced User Experience: Clear structure, descriptive alt text, and keyboard-friendly navigation improve usability for all users while boosting SEO performance.
Brand Differentiation: Demonstrating commitment to accessibility positions your organization as inclusive and socially responsible.
Implementing Accessibility in Your Editorial Workflow
The challenge isn’t whether to implement accessibility—it’s how to do it efficiently without overwhelming your team or budget.
The Fix-It-Forward Approach
Rather than attempting to overhaul your entire site overnight, we recommend a “fix-it-forward” strategy. This approach ensures all new and updated content meets accessibility standards while gradually improving legacy content. The result? Steady progress without resource strain.
Leverage Open Source Tools
Many CMS platforms offer free accessibility tools that integrate directly into your editorial workflow:
Drupal: Editoria11y Accessibility Checker, Accessibility Scanner, CKEditor Accessibility Auditor
WordPress: WP Accessibility, Editoria11y Accessibility Checker, WP ADA Compliance Check Basic
These tools scan your content and flag common WCAG 2.2 AA issues before publication, transforming accessibility checks into routine quality assurance.
Prioritize High-Impact Changes
Focus your efforts on fixes that significantly improve usability for screen reader and keyboard users:
- Missing image alt text
- Poor heading structure
- Duplicate or unclear link text
- Links that open new windows without warning
- Insufficient color contrast (may require developer collaboration)
Less critical issues can be addressed during routine content updates, spreading the workload over time.
Manage Legacy Content Strategically
Don’t let your content backlog create paralysis. Prioritize high-traffic pages and those supporting key user journeys. Since refreshing legacy content annually is already an SEO best practice, use these updates as opportunities to implement accessibility improvements.
Build Team Capabilities
Make accessibility part of your content culture through targeted education and resources. Provide internal training, quick reference guides, and trusted resources to keep editors confident and informed.
Recommended Learning Resources:
Track Progress and Celebrate Wins
Measure success by tracking pages published with zero critical accessibility issues. Share achievements in editorial meetings to reinforce your team’s impact and maintain momentum.
Scaling Your Accessibility Program
While regular content checks provide immediate value, sustainable accessibility success requires periodic comprehensive assessments and usability testing. If your team lacks bandwidth for advanced testing, consider adding this to your 1-2 year digital roadmap. Consistent attention over time proves more sustainable and cost-effective than attempting massive one-time remediation.
Start with Free Tools: Google Lighthouse provides immediate insights into accessibility issues and actionable remediation guidance.
Advanced Assessment Options: For teams ready to expand their program, tools like SortSite, SiteImprove, and JAWS screen reader testing offer comprehensive assessments. These advanced tools can uncover complex issues beyond content-level checks, though they may require developer collaboration for implementation.
Quarterly Program Goals:
- Regular Google Lighthouse assessments for incremental improvements
- Full-site scans or top-page audits with developer support
- Remediation prioritization based on traffic and business value
- Ongoing WCAG 2.2 AA compliance tracking
Consider engaging someone who navigates the web differently than your team does. This perspective will expand your understanding of accessibility’s real-world impact and inform more effective solutions.
Accessibility as Continuous Improvement
Accessibility isn’t a one-time project—it’s an ongoing commitment to inclusive digital experiences.
By integrating accessibility best practices into your publishing workflow, you’ll build a stronger, more inclusive website that protects your brand, empowers your users, and demonstrates digital leadership.
The fix-it-forward approach transforms what seems like an overwhelming challenge into manageable, sustainable progress.
Ready to Accelerate Your Accessibility Journey?
Explore additional insights from our team:
- More than Mouse Clicks: A Non-Disabled User’s Guide to Accessible Web Navigation
- How Does the European Accessibility Act Affect Your Business?
Ready to take action? Contact Oomph to see how we can support your accessibility journey. We start with targeted accessibility audits that identify your highest-impact opportunities, then collaborate with your team to develop a strategic roadmap that aligns with your internal goals while respecting your resources and team size.
When you’re responsible for your organization’s digital presence, it’s natural to focus on what’s visible: the design, the content, the user experience. But beneath every modern website lies a complex ecosystem of technologies, integrations, and workflows that can either accelerate your team’s success or create hidden friction that slows everything down.
That’s where a technical audit becomes invaluable. It’s not just a diagnostic tool—it’s a strategic opportunity to understand the foundation of your platform and make informed decisions about your digital future.
It’s Like a Home Inspection for Your Website
Think about buying a house. You walk through focusing on the big picture—does the kitchen work for your family? Is there enough space? But a good home inspector looks deeper, checking the foundation, examining the electrical system, and spotting that small leak under the bathroom sink that could become a major problem later.
A technical audit takes the same comprehensive approach to your digital platform. We examine not just what’s working today, but what might impact your team’s ability to execute tomorrow. The goal isn’t to find problems for the sake of finding them—it’s to give you the complete picture you need to plan strategically.
Creating Shared Understanding Across Your Entire Team
One of the most powerful outcomes of a technical audit is alignment. Whether you’re managing internal developers, partnering with an agency, or preparing to issue an RFP, having a clear baseline allows everyone to ask better questions and make more accurate decisions.
A strategic technical audit delivers:
Proactive Problem-Solving: Surface technical issues before they become roadblocks to important campaigns or launches.
Performance Optimization: Identify specific improvements that will measurably enhance user experience and conversion rates.
Workflow Enhancement: Reveal friction points that slow down content updates, campaign launches, or day-to-day management tasks.
Vendor Enablement: Provide partners and potential vendors with the context they need to scope work accurately and ask intelligent questions.
Strategic Planning: Create a foundation for long-term digital strategy decisions, from infrastructure investments to editorial tooling.
The organizations we work with often tell us that a technical audit helped them transition from reactive maintenance to proactive digital platform management—a shift that pays dividends across every initiative.
What We Typically Discover
While every platform is unique, certain patterns emerge across industries and organization types. Technical audits frequently reveal:
Security and Maintenance Opportunities: Outdated software, plugins requiring updates, or access configurations that can be strengthened with minimal effort. This often includes ensuring accessibility compliance meets current standards.
Performance Enhancements: Specific optimizations in areas like image compression, caching strategies, or database queries that directly impact user experience. Modern audits also examine search visibility and performance optimization.
Scalability Considerations: Code or architectural decisions that work fine today but could limit growth or flexibility as your needs evolve. This includes evaluating search infrastructure and international expansion capabilities.
Process Improvements: Gaps in version control, deployment workflows, or change management that create unnecessary risk or slow down development cycles.
Editorial Workflow Optimization: Content management processes that feel cumbersome or inconsistent, often because they evolved organically rather than being designed strategically. For global organizations, this includes reviewing translation and localization systems.
Many of these findings aren’t urgent fixes—they’re strategic insights that become incredibly valuable when you’re planning a redesign, launching a major campaign, or evaluating new partnerships.
When a Technical Audit Delivers Maximum Value
You don’t need to wait for problems to emerge. Technical audits are particularly valuable when:
Taking Over Digital Responsibility: You’ve inherited a platform and need a comprehensive understanding of what you’re working with and where the opportunities lie.
Planning Major Initiatives: Before investing in a redesign, platform migration, or significant feature development, understanding your current foundation prevents costly surprises.
Preparing for Vendor Selection: Whether you’re issuing an RFP or evaluating agencies, giving potential partners accurate technical context leads to better proposals and more realistic timelines.
Developing Digital Strategy: When you’re ready to create a roadmap for digital growth, grounding decisions in technical reality rather than assumptions leads to better outcomes. This is especially important when considering AI integration or generative engine optimization strategies.
Our Approach to Technical Audits
We design our audits to build clarity and confidence, not overwhelm you with technical jargon. Rather than simply delivering a report, we walk through findings with your team, prioritize recommendations based on your specific goals, and translate technical insights into actionable business language you can share with stakeholders.
Our methodology goes beyond code analysis. We examine how your platform supports your current workflows, aligns with your organizational objectives, and positions you for future growth. This combination of technical depth and strategic perspective ensures you get insights that drive real business outcomes.
The audit process focuses on partnership, not judgment.
We’re not looking for flaws to criticize—we’re identifying opportunities to help you and your partners make smarter decisions. The result is visibility into the hidden layers of your digital platform and a foundation for more strategic planning, better technology investments, and sustainable long-term success.
Ready to understand what’s really happening under the hood of your digital platform? Let’s talk about how a technical audit could support your goals and strengthen your team’s ability to execute on your digital vision.
Overview
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum stands as one of Boston’s most distinctive cultural treasures. Founded by the visionary Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, the Museum offers a transportative experience that defies conventional art museum expectations. Yet for all its in-person magic, the digital experience had room to better serve the institution’s mission.
The Museum needed a solution that would honor their unique brand identity while solving critical usability challenges that were hindering meaningful digital engagement.
Challenge
The Museum faced a variety of digital barriers that were undermining their core mission. Since launching a redesign effort in 2017, their website struggled with fundamental usability issues that created friction at several touchpoints:
The Findability Crisis: Staff members regularly used Google to locate content on their own website. The people most familiar with the site struggled to navigate it efficiently, highlighting how challenging the experience must be for visitors.
Accessibility Barriers: The website failed to meet current accessibility standards, with poor color contrast rendering content difficult to read for visitors with visual impairments. As an institution committed to welcoming all visitors, they have been spearheading important initiatives to review and remediate accessibility, including their digital platform.
Navigation Complexity: The previous design used internal logic that wasn’t intuitive to visitors, particularly those unfamiliar with the institution, treating many landing pages like a series of doors and frames. While visually striking, this approach created a maze-like experience that prioritized aesthetics over visitor needs.
Content Architecture Issues: Exhibition details, ticketing information, and visitor resources were scattered across the site without hierarchy or clear pathways between related content.
These challenges weren’t just inconveniences—they were preventing the Museum from achieving its core digital goals of inspiring visits, supporting trip planning, and fostering deeper engagement with their collection and history.
Our Approach
Rather than pursuing a complete rebuild that would disrupt operations and require extensive backend development, we opted for a strategic re-architecture. This approach allowed us to transform the user experience while preserving the visual identity and content management systems the Museum’s team relied on.
Our methodology centered on understanding both the institution’s unique character and their visitors’ diverse needs:
Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment
We began with comprehensive stakeholder workshops, bringing together team members from across the Museum to align on priorities and success metrics. By synthesizing member surveys, analytics data, and internal insights, we developed a clear picture of both current pain points and future opportunities.
User-Centered Design Strategy
We mapped core tasks to real visitor types by creating focused user journeys for Museum Members, purchasing a ticket, navigating the museum’s collection and information while visiting, and researching art online afterward. Our user journey mapping ensured every design decision served real visitor needs.
Information Architecture Transformation
We rebuilt the site’s navigation and menu system, creating intuitive pathways that support natural user behavior. TreeJack testing validated our approach, ensuring the new architecture would actually improve task completion rates.
Accessibility-First Enhancement
Newly designed components aligned with WCAG 2.2 AA standards, proving that accessibility and aesthetic excellence aren’t mutually exclusive. We demonstrated how inclusive design could enhance the Museum’s distinctive visual character.
“Gentle Elegance” Design Philosophy
Working closely with the Museum team, we developed a design approach that captured the institution’s intimate, sophisticated character through subtle details—lace patterns and mosaic elements that reference the collection and architecture without overwhelming the interface. This strategy allowed us to inject personality into the digital experience while maintaining focus on usability.

Strategic Solutions Delivered
Enhanced Navigation Architecture: We introduced dropdown menus and logical content groupings that transformed how visitors move through the site. Museum websites often avoid complex navigation, but we proved that thoughtful hierarchy actually improves rather than complicates the user experience.
Reimagined Visit Page: This became the crown jewel of our transformation—a comprehensive resource that balances practical planning information with pathways to deeper content exploration. The page now prepares visitors for the Museum’s unique characteristics (awareness of the lack of labels, availability of audio guides and mobile device charging stations, etc.) while building excitement for the experience ahead.
Component System Redesign: Our new component library enables the Museum’s team to create engaging content layouts without sacrificing accessibility or performance standards.
Performance Optimization: Behind-the-scenes improvements ensure the site loads quickly and functions smoothly across all devices and connection speeds.

Measurable Impact
The transformed digital experience delivered immediate, measurable improvements across every key area of visitor engagement. Three weeks after launch, the data tells a compelling story of enhanced user behavior and meaningful interaction with the Museum’s digital presence.
Enhanced Homepage Engagement: The redesigned homepage achieved a 9.7% increase in views alongside a significant 15.6% increase in average engagement time, demonstrating that visitors are not only discovering the site more frequently but spending meaningful time exploring what it offers.
Dramatic Exhibition Discovery: The Exhibitions section experienced remarkable growth with a 179.7% increase in views and 22.9% higher engagement time. This transformation demonstrates how improved information architecture and content discoverability can dramatically expand visitor interest in the Museum’s programming.
Deeper Content Engagement: The Inside the Collection blog saw an 18.4% increase in views coupled with an impressive 61.7% increase in average engagement time. Visitors are not only finding this content more easily but engaging with it far more meaningfully, suggesting successful pathways between practical planning content and deeper cultural exploration.
Strengthened Community Connection: The Membership section achieved a 15.7% increase in views with steady engagement time growth of 2.5%, indicating improved pathways for visitors interested in developing ongoing relationships with the Museum.
These metrics validate our strategic approach of balancing usability improvements with content discoverability. The data shows visitors are finding information more efficiently while also discovering opportunities for deeper engagement with the Museum’s mission and offerings.
Why This Project Matters
Isabella Stewart Gardner created something unprecedented: an intimate, personal art experience that defies conventional museum expectations. Every element was chosen and placed with intention, creating an environment where visitors don’t simply observe art—they step into a carefully curated world.
This uniqueness creates both opportunity and responsibility in the digital realm. The website serves as many visitors’ first encounter with the Museum’s distinctive character. When that initial experience is confusing or inaccessible, it undermines so much of what makes the Gardner special.
Our strategic approach recognized that preserving the Museum’s essence required more than maintaining visual elements — it demanded understanding what makes the institution extraordinary and translating those qualities into digital interactions. By balancing usability, accessibility, and aesthetic sophistication, we enhanced an online experience that genuinely reflects the Gardner’s spirit.
The transformation supports the Museum’s broader mission in measurable ways:
Visitor Empowerment: Clear, accessible information helps visitors plan with confidence and arrive prepared for the Gardner’s unique approach to art presentation.
Deeper Engagement: Improved content discoverability means the relationship with the Museum can extend beyond the physical visit through blog content and collection exploration.
Inclusive Access: Meeting accessibility standards ensures the Gardner’s digital presence welcomes all visitors, reflecting the institution’s commitment to openness and equity.
Operational Excellence: Streamlined content management empowers staff to focus on mission-critical work rather than wrestling with technical barriers.
Ultimately, this project demonstrates how thoughtful digital transformation can honor an institution’s distinctive character while removing barriers to meaningful engagement. We didn’t just improve a website, we helped the Gardner Museum extend its intimate, intentional spirit into the digital realm, ensuring that more people can connect with what makes this cultural treasure truly extraordinary.
In 2025, the way people discover and engage with digital content has shifted dramatically. Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer the only strategy that brings people to your website. Meet Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the emerging frontier for content creators and researchers looking to earn visibility through AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity.
If your organization hasn’t begun adapting its content strategy for GEO, now is a great opportunity. Here’s everything you need to know about what GEO is, why it matters, and how to start optimizing for it.
What is GEO and How Is It Different From SEO?
While SEO focuses on improving your visibility on traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) by using keywords, backlinks, and technical performance, GEO is about making your content the answer in AI-generated responses.
Rather than presenting users with a list of links as typically experienced with a Google Search, GEO centers on AI tools that synthesize information. These platforms use large language models (LLMs) to provide direct answers to a range of questions. Instead of competing for a top 10 ranking on Google, you’re aiming to be cited, summarized, or linked to by tools like Gemini or ChatGPT.
In short: SEO gets you found, GEO gets you featured.
Why GEO Matters in 2025
AI tools are no longer sidekicks to Google. They’re central players in how people research, compare options, and make decisions. As of May 2025, ChatGPT alone receives over 4.5 billion monthly visits, while Perplexity processes over 500 million searches per month. Google remains the dominant force in online search, with billions of daily visits from users worldwide. But with the direct integration of Gemini into search results, the way people find information is changing. Users can now get answers without ever clicking through to your website (this is called a “zero-click search result”).
Consequently, if your content isn’t showing up in AI answers, you’re missing out on a massive and growing segment of online visibility. Depending on what your website offers, this can be especially important for brand recognition and perception, traffic and lead potential, as well as establishing authority and credibility. In 2025, AI summaries are the new front page of search.
How GEO Works: What AI Tools Are Looking For
Each generative engine has its quirks, but several patterns are emerging across platforms:
1. Structure Matters More Than Ever
AI tools rely on clear, structured content. Use schema markup generously, particularly FAQPage, Organization, Article, and Product types. Structured data helps AI understand your content contextually, making it easier to reference in generated answers.
Tip: Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper is a great place to start reviewing your schema.
2. E-E-A-T Principles Still Rule
Google’s Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) framework, a core concept for SEO, now extends to AI tools like Gemini. Show credentials, cite data, link to reputable sources, and provide content authored by credible experts.
If you have certifications, awards, partnerships, or original research, feature them clearly. This shows your authority in your area of expertise.
3. Conversation > Keywords
GEO is less about keywords and more about natural language. Write in a conversational tone and frame your content in terms of questions and answers. Think: “What are the best family vacation spots in California?” instead of “California vacation destinations.”
4. Content Freshness is Key
AI platforms (especially Perplexity, which indexes content daily) prioritize content that’s up to date. Refresh evergreen posts annually and use a content calendar to help track when to review content. Be sure to prioritize articles with titles like “Top” or “Best,” as these perform well in answer generation, particularly on ChatGPT.
5. Visuals Are Increasingly Important
Gemini and Perplexity are both investing in multimodal search. Media assets like charts, videos, and well-optimized images can increase the chance of being featured. Also make sure your image alt text, captions, and surrounding content are descriptive.
6. Prioritize Performance & Mobile-Responsiveness
Don’t ignore performance or the site’s mobile experience. A site that performs well on mobile will load quickly, display clearly on small screens, and typically avoids frustrating interactions (like unclickable buttons or pop-ups). Poor mobile performance (i.e. slow Core Web Vitals) can hurt your rankings, which in turn reduces your visibility to LLMs that rely on search results as part of their input sources.
Tool-Specific GEO Tips
Gemini (Google)
- Optimize for the Search Generative Experience (SGE) with crawlable content and Core Web Vitals in check.
- Use a hub and spoke content model to build topical authority. (This model organizes content around a central “hub” topic page that then links to related and more detailed “spoke” pages).
- Regularly monitor impressions and click-through rates in Google Search Console. A dip in clicks with high impressions could signal that your content is being used in AI answers.
Perplexity
- With an emphasis on factual accuracy, source transparency, and user control over search scope, sources are essential! For your site, focus on citations and factual, digestible content.
- Use Question & Answer formatting to align with Perplexity’s research focus.
- Include multimedia assets and data points that back up your authority on a subject. And don’t just stop at video and images, charts, diagrams and maps are also great sources.
ChatGPT
- Embrace the feeling of personalization. With an emphasis on providing personalized recommendations to its users, ChatGPT seeks out phrases on websites like “top” or “best” that give the user the feeling of receiving personalized insights.
- Optimize your About Us page so that it clearly articulates your mission and values. ChatGPT often uses this to evaluate trustworthiness and authority.
- Strengthen your backlink profile to compete with high-authority sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, and news outlets frequently cited by the model.
Tracking GEO Performance
A consequence of AI summaries is that websites may see a drop in clicks and visits within their analytics, particularly a decrease in organic traffic month over month. With users getting the answers they need from AI-generated search responses, they may no longer need to visit your website to get information. However, those users who do click through often stay longer and discover more pages than they did previously.
Additionally, websites may also see an increase in impressions or referrals from AI assistants. This data is increasingly important to track.
So even if AI tools don’t always send traffic directly, you can still measure their impact. Here’s how:
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Segmentation: Create segments by referral source (e.g., chat.openai.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com) to track AI-specific sessions.
- Landing Page Analysis: AI tools often link deep into your site. Use GA4 to monitor which long-tail pages are receiving AI-generated traffic.
- Google Search Console: Identify FAQ-style queries with high impressions but low CTR. These may indicate your content is being summarized in AI answers.
Action Items for Digital Teams & Clients
- Audit your existing content with these optimization strategies in mind. (Tip: You can even use AI tools like Gemini to identify optimization opportunities for particular pages).
- Update schema across all major content types, especially Q&A and organizational pages.
- Refresh your high-performing or evergreen content regularly, especially pieces tied to seasons, events, or top lists.
- Revise your content strategy to include multimedia assets, structured data, and topic clustering.
- Optimize your About page and author bios to strengthen trust signals for LLMs.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing for GEO isn’t just a trend, it’s a fundamental shift in how people find and interact with content online. As AI-generated answers become a dominant part of the discovery experience, your brand’s ability to show up in these spaces could mean the difference between gaining trust or going unnoticed.
By embracing schema, writing conversationally, and refreshing content with purpose, your digital presence can evolve to meet the moment, one where the best answer often wins over the best ranking.
Ready to optimize your content for AI-powered search? Let’s make it happen.
Search and SEO are evolving rapidly in the wake of new AI options. Many of our clients are concerned about continuing to receive a return on their SEO investment. They worry about putting effort into the right places. And they worry about how to prepare for a drastic shift in the landscape, should it come.
The speed of evolution has made these questions difficult to answer with authority. But we conducted research, asked some experts, and have some theories that put these fears into context. Hopefully, they can help your organization navigate these uncharted waters.
Do AI Overviews reduce click-through rates?
In 2024, Google introduced AI-generated answers to queries in its search results. These “AI Overviews” are more likely to appear when a visitor phrases their search query like a question, using “what,” “how,” or “why” language. These overviews provide citations to their sources and a right sidebar (on laptops) with other references. Some are calling the traffic these overviews generate “zero-click” searches.
While the answer is yes, click-through rates have reduced by as much as 10%, others argue that most websites will be unaffected. For one, Google has scaled back their AI Overviews to only 1.28% of its billions of daily searches. This will likely increase now that AI has become less likely to provide incorrect answers, but the misconception that AI Overviews are everywhere is overblown.
Further, the same article goes on to assert that 96.5% of all AI Overviews appear for informational keywords — meaning very few overviews are created for transactional, navigational, and local searches. Informational questions are much easier and safer for AI to answer and will likely remain the dominant use case.
Others argue that AI Overviews keep low-performing traffic away from your site. For many years, Google has already been answering queries with information cards. When you Google a business, you are likely to get a card with the business name, phone number, web address, and even a map with their location. Popular businesses might include reviews and specific details like daily open hours. These information cards have already been taking traffic away from your site. But was that the traffic that you wanted?
These folks argue, if the searcher just wanted to know an answer to a question they had while having a conversation with a friend, they would have come to your site for that information and then left. Their visit would have counted as a bounce and negatively affected your monthly traffic data. Same with the ones that just needed a phone number or wanted to know what time you close. They would have come to your website for that one thing and then left.
Google’s own research says that when people use AI Overviews to start understanding a topic, they end up searching more frequently and express higher satisfaction with the results. Their position is that these overviews scratch the surface and help visitors ask more in-depth follow-up questions. Other recent studies have found that click-through increased for companies featured in AI Overviews, while those without an AI Overview lost traffic.
One thing is for sure: AI Overviews’ prominent position at the top of the results have pushed down organic results and made it harder for high-ranking organic websites to get noticed.
Takeaway:
Mixed. Yes, it is possible that AI Overviews are preventing click-through. It is also possible this traffic was not going to convert. And depending on your product and position in the market, AI Overviews might drive slightly more traffic than organic search. Either way, the result is an even more competitive search landscape than before.
Should I optimize my content for AI Overviews?
The most obvious next question is “How can my brand rank for AI Overviews?” While this is an important question, remember that AI Overviews often include citations from multiple sources. So while your business may rank for an overview, it is likely not going to be alone.
The answer to this question is more of the same things you should already know. In order to rank highly, you should:
- Follow SEO best practices
- Be authentic (leverage first-hand experiences like anecdotes, reference data sources, and be as unique as possible with your perspective)
- Anticipate next steps (what does someone need to learn and in which order)
- Use structured data (schema, JSON, etc.)
- Include multimedia (images, video, gifs)
Lots of SEO companies want to help your business rank, and AI Overviews is the next frontier. But from all the articles we have reviewed (and there were many), the same best practices apply — there are no shortcuts to great content.
Takeaway
Yes, optimize your content for AI Overviews, but this does not mean you need to do more than what you are already doing. To be a highly quoted source within your industry has benefits for brand recognition and trust, but just like long-tail keywords, these searches may have low volume. In the end, it is an investment vs. return question. There is a significant overlap between the sources cited in AI Overviews and the top organic search results, therefore, if your site already ranks well, you can’t do much more to get into an AI Overview.
Should I continue investing in SEO for Google?
Some clients worry that Google will be unseated as the dominant search engine now that tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have seen an explosion of millions of users. While these tools are indeed experiencing hockey-stick growth, Google completely dominates search volume.
SparkToro charted a 20% growth in search queries for Google in 2024, and crunched the numbers to conclude Google receives 373 times more searches than ChatGPT.
To put that into context, Google handles 14 billion searches per day. The next closest competitor is Bing search with 613.5 million per day, followed by Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and then Chat GPT. In other words, your investment would see a larger return if your team optimized content for Bing.com than for ChatGPT.
These numbers are fresh from March 2025. Things can change, of course, but AI tools are not used only for search, have a relatively small market share, and do not get used daily. They suffer from not being the default tool at hand, which for most people, is a web browser. Google remains synonymous with search for a large percent of the population.
Takeaway
Yes, continue to invest in SEO for Google specifically. Google is still the biggest player in the search market, and their share is gaining, not decreasing (yet).
If we don’t implement structured data, are we losing out on AI crawler traffic?
Structured data is great for all SEO, so actually, you should implement structured data like Schema.org for across-the-board SEO value.
For those of you using Google Tag Manager (GTM), you might know that you get some structured data for free. When a Googlebot crawls your site, it includes structured JSON data that it creates client-side, which means that Google gets the structured data but it is inaccessible to any other crawler. If the data existed server-side, other bots could access it.
Most non-Google robot crawlers do not execute Javascript, therefore, they miss out on anything rendered in the browser. These crawlers include Bing, Yahoo, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. So again, server-side structured data would benefit all the search engine crawlers that are not Google.
But do LLMs really need structured data?
Large Language Models (LLMs) use statistical analysis to predict what word will follow the previous set of words. They do not understand language as much as they can mathematically reproduce its patterns. Therefore, they create structure from unstructured data all the time.
But while LLMs process and understand unstructured text, providing structured data would significantly help interpret and categorize your content effectively and accurately.
Takeaway
The short answer is no, LLMs do not require structured data to create meaningful connections between content and search intent. But structured data would help them and any other search service to correctly label, tag, and organize your data. The longer answer is an investment in structured metadata would pay off in dividends for all search engines and crawlers.
How can we prepare for SEO’s evolving future?
In mid-2024, when Google first introduced AI Overviews, some in the SEO/SERP industry claimed sites could lose up to 25% of their traffic. That has not come to pass, with some sites reporting as high as 12% and others lows of 8.9% and 2.6% — not insignificant, but lower than expected. And the data is still coming in, with others reporting increases in traffic with specific kinds of intent.
While AI increasingly shapes search results, content strategy will need to shift for sites to remain visible and relevant. High-quality, authoritative, and authentic content that offers depth, accuracy, and unique insights is still valuable currency. AI algorithms are designed to identify and prioritize quality, trustworthy, and well-researched content for inclusion in their summaries.
Sites should continue to target long-tail and question-based keywords to align content with visitor’s increase in natural language queries. This type of content is often more challenging for AI to fully synthesize and may still necessitate user click-through for a comprehensive understanding. Going deeper to investigate specific intents behind longer conversational queries could also be crucial for attracting relevant traffic.
Finally, diversifying content formats by incorporating video, infographics, and interactive elements will continue to enhance engagement and provide unique value that text-based AI summaries don’t fully replicate. And optimizing content for featured snippets remains important, as appearing in these snippets increases the likelihood of a website’s content being cited within AI Overviews.
Takeaway
The fundamentals of great content and best-practice SEO has not changed as dramatically as the tools that crawl your site and serve your content have.
Final Thoughts
Anything in the tech space evolves rapidly, and SEO is no exception. While the methods and the tools we leverage might change, the fundamentals remain strong. Keep doing what you have been doing, keep being curious, and keep asking these important questions of those in your circle whom you trust. We’re all figuring these things out in real time and can benefit from each other’s expertise.
If you have in-depth questions about SEO, content management, and the evolving AI-powered landscape, reach out to our team and we’ll always do our best to answer them thoughtfully and from multiple angles.
AI disclaimer: Google’s Deep Research was used for initial exploration and source gathering. All sources cited in this article were reviewed by the author. ChatGPT was used for follow up questions, as well as AI Overviews for examples of common questions. This article synthesizes these sources and was written by a human.
The Brief
Visit California is a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) with over 25 years of experience in promoting California as a premier travel destination. The organization, funded through a unique partnership between the state and the travel industry, operates with a substantial budget of over $185 million (2023). As the leader of California’s brand messaging, Visit California previously anchored its campaigns under the “Dream Big” brand positioning. However, following a significant shift in traveler motivations post-pandemic, Visit California recognized a growing desire for experiences that foster joy, connection, and adventure.
This insight led to the evolution of the brand into “The Ultimate Playground,” a strategic repositioning that highlights the state’s unparalleled diversity of geography, activities, and cultural experiences.
The “Let’s Play” campaign leveraged a robust mix of television, out-of-home, digital, and social media activations to showcase California’s diverse offerings — from wine tasting and rock climbing to luxury hotel stays, food truck adventures, and outdoor music festivals. By highlighting the playful spirit inherent in every experience, the campaign aimed to deepen the audience’s emotional connection to the state, reinforcing California’s identity as The Ultimate Playground and setting the stage for sustained brand engagement.
The APPROACH
The initial roll-out of a rebrand update is critical, and transitioning from “Dream Big” to “The Ultimate Playground” required careful internal alignment and thorough message testing. Oomph, alongside Visit California’s partner agencies, began collaborating on this effort about nine months before the campaign launch. During these early planning meetings, our team contributed key ideas and strategic approaches to help shape the campaign.
Our focus remained on the web user and their position in the customer journey. Previous campaigns had not fully optimized the user flow, so we saw this as an opportunity to reimagine the experience. With paid media driving traffic to the website, it was essential to provide visitors with clear actions once they arrived. The advertising had done its job by capturing attention and sparking interest. Now, our challenge was to build on that momentum, guiding users from interest to meaningful engagement and action.
An interactive Quiz
The Ultimate Playground campaign needed to accomplish a few things:
- Educate the consumer about the new brand positioning and why California should be considered the Ultimate Playground
- Inform the consumer about play and how it is more about kids and theme parks. Adults can and should play as well, and serious activities can be conducted in playful ways
- Activate the consumer with inspiration by giving them a unique experience and curating inspirational, playful activities throughout the state
Our teams settled on a quiz as a way to engage visitors and serve them personalized content. Based on initial research, we decided an image-based quiz would be the fastest and most fun way to answer questions and receive a set of recommendations. Choosing preferences from a set of images is a quick way to make progress tangible. We limited the questions to nine, and most visitors took two minutes to complete the quiz.
Play Styles
The eight Play Styles were based on personas researched and created by the National Institute for Play, headquartered in California. Content creators at Visit California crafted a series of TV spots with glimpses into different styles of play. Our Play Quiz would highlight which Play Style matched the participant’s preferences, and our results pages served relevant, curated content, a similar Celebrity personality, and even a secondary play style.
Email collection allowed visitors to send their play style results to themselves and allowed opt-in to more personalized content. Our team worked quickly over three months to solidify the approach, choose the quiz method and weighting criteria of the questions, and design the eight play style pages, two landing pages, a homepage takeover, and supporting pages for the new campaign.

The Results
Play Quiz: Avg. session duration
Play Styles: Avg. session duration
Compared to Site: Avg. session duration
Our approach to the campaign was to support the bottom of the funnel and give visitors coming from digital ads something useful. Given the wealth of content the Visit California website contains, these broad Play Style personas made visitors see themselves in California. It brought curated content to them and provided what we thought of as a personal homepage with relevant recommendations.
“Let’s Play” was the first part of a years-long brand campaign. We are already working on the campaign for 2025 which we hope will be even more engaging than the first!
THE CHALLENGE
The Challenge
Keene State College (KSC), a liberal arts institution within the University System of New Hampshire, needed a modern, user-friendly website that aligned with its mission while effectively serving multiple audiences.
Over time, the existing site had grown into an overwhelming digital ecosystem, filled with complex navigation, disjointed content, and inconsistent branding. To better serve students and stakeholders, KSC needed to:
- Prioritize prospective students while maintaining relevance for parents, faculty, and alumni.
- Simplify content structure to help users quickly find what they need.
- Modernize the design and user experience while staying true to the college’s brand.
- Improve accessibility and performance to ensure a seamless experience across all devices.
KSC partnered with Oomph to create a scalable, audience-first digital experience that supports recruitment, engagement, and long-term adaptability.
OUR APPROACH
We focused on eliminating friction and enhancing engagement through a user-first strategy, modern information architecture, and a flexible, scalable design system.
Understanding the Audience & Challenges
Our discovery process included stakeholder workshops, user journey mapping, and content analysis to identify key roadblocks. We uncovered:
- Difficult navigation made it hard for prospective students to find admissions and academic program details.
- Multiple audiences competing for visibility resulted in a cluttered, confusing user experience.
- Inconsistent branding and outdated UI weakened the college’s online presence and first impressions.
By clearly defining what success looked like and identifying areas of improvement, we laid the foundation for a streamlined, student-centric digital experience.
Defining the Strategy & Roadmap
With a deep understanding of user needs, we developed a strategy focused on engagement, clarity, and accessibility.
- Navigation designed for prospective students while keeping secondary audiences accessible.
- A scalable mega menu that simplified content discovery without overwhelming users.
- A brand refresh of the digital identity that modernized KSC’s online presence while maintaining its authenticity.
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility compliance to ensure an inclusive experience for all users.
This strategy ensured that KSC’s website would be functional, engaging, and built to support student recruitment.
Executing the Vision
To bring the strategy to life, we developed a modern design system with a flexible, component-driven architecture that simplifies content management and improves the user experience.
- Audience-first navigation & mega menu – Prospective students can quickly find key admissions and academic information, while faculty, parents, and alumni have dedicated sections tailored to their needs.
- Scalable component library – A structured yet flexible design system enables KSC teams to easily update and manage content while maintaining a cohesive visual identity.
- Optimized for mobile & accessibility – A fully responsive, WCAG-compliant design ensures a seamless experience across all devices.
By creating a well-structured, intuitive content ecosystem, KSC now has a digital experience that is easy to manage and designed for long-term adaptability.
This team brings creativity and structure to projects. Decisions are based on data and reports, but they include a connection to heart and real world users. They bring in subject matter experts at the appropriate time but never lose site of the big picture.”
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING, Keene State College
THE RESULTS
A Student-Centric Digital Experience
The new Keene State College website now provides:
- A clear, structured experience for prospective students – Admissions, academics, and student life content is now easier to find and explore.
- A modernized digital identity – A refreshed brand and UI create a welcoming, engaging first impression.
- Seamless navigation for multiple audiences – While prospective students remain the priority, faculty, alumni, and parents still have dedicated access points.
- An accessible, scalable, and future-proof platform – Designed to support long-term growth, engagement, and institutional goals.
A Digital Experience That Grows With Its Community
Keene State’s new site is more than just a redesign—it’s a long-term investment in student engagement, accessibility, and institutional identity. By focusing on audience needs, structured content, and a scalable design system, KSC now has a future-ready digital presence that enhances recruitment, supports students, and strengthens the college community.
Is Your Higher Ed Website Ready for the Next Generation of Students?
If your institution is struggling with outdated content, complex navigation, or disconnected user experiences, a strategic digital approach can create clarity and engagement.
Let’s talk about how Oomph can help your institution stand out in an increasingly competitive higher ed landscape.
A world without third-party cookies is fast approaching. Big-name browsers like Safari and Firefox already block them by default, and Google Chrome — the biggest browser of them all — is set to follow.
First, a quick refresher: Websites use cookies to store data in your browser specific to that website and other sites. The question, though, is who the website is storing the data for. Third-party cookies store data that allows advertising services to track your behavior on any given site, while first-party cookies are those a website uses for its own purposes.
Like most things, not all cookies are created equal. As browsers transition to these new defaults, some will make the grade, while others will be blocked for good. What does this mean for your website, and how can you get ahead of the change? We’ll walk you through it.
Are Cookies Really Going Away?
That depends on the type of cookies your site uses. Browsers are slowly blocking third-party cookies by default — those associated with cross-site tracking for ad networks like Facebook or LinkedIn — but first-site, or same-site, cookies will remain.
That means that if retargeting is essential to your paid marketing strategy, you may need to rethink your approach. But any cookies you use to support your site features and functionality can keep on keeping on, assuming your users have agreed to the use of those cookies on your site. For example, you may be able to keep track of previously viewed content and use that information to suggest other relevant content to that user. So don’t say goodbye to your cookie consent services either; you still have to give users the chance to opt out of any first-party cookies.
Why Now? Haven’t We Been Using Cookies Forever?
While cookies have been a web-surfing staple for almost as long as we’ve been using the internet, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Legislation like GDPR in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and the New York Privacy Act are tightening restrictions on the use of consumer data, and rapidly increasing cybersecurity threats in recent years have illuminated the risks of large-scale data storage. Consumers have also begun to prize their privacy, realizing that their information is valuable and no organization should be looking over their shoulder as they browse.
Ultimately, phasing out third-party cookies is about doing what’s best for your users. Making the move now can help instill trust in your website, since users know you aren’t capturing their data behind the scenes. Cookie consent forms also put the data you do use out in the open, showing users that your organization takes their privacy seriously and is prepared to protect it.
How Will The End of Third-Party Cookies Impact My Industry?
Not all organizations will feel the shift equally. We’ve seen some verticals get ahead of the curve, while others are naturally less reliant on third-party cookies. Here are some key industry-specific areas to consider.
Healthcare
Strict privacy laws and regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have turned healthcare organizations into pioneers in this area. The Office of Civil Rights even published a bulletin warning organizations about third-party cookies.
Many of the healthcare brands we support at Oomph are already focused on safeguarding user privacy because they’re used to doing it with medical records. One of our clients, for example, is already exploring adopting an in-house analytics tool hosted on their own server. If your healthcare organization is relying on third-party cookies for any marketing efforts, analytic insights, or other website features, start thinking now about the best way to phase them out.
Higher Education
Many institutions we work with are using third-party cookies because of digital efforts to drive student enrollment. When implementing personalization cookies, be sure they are implemented with the proper “SameSite” attribute value. Then be sure to engage your vendors; we’ve encouraged many of our higher education clients to explore how their vendors are preparing for this transition.
Nonprofits
Like higher education, nonprofits should review the vendors and larger ad networks they rely on to build their volunteer base or drive donations. Many nonprofits don’t use these services, but those that do should get ahead of the change, otherwise you may stand to lose an important fundraising channel.
4 Steps To Prepare for the End of Third-Party Cookies
Cookies, analytics, and cross-site tracking might all sound like areas best left to the pros. But there’s a lot you can do to prepare your organization for the move away from cookies, as well as critical opportunities to pull in a vendor to maintain the functionality you need.
Audit Your Site
A website audit should always be your first step. Taking stock of the cookies you use is the best way to get a handle on the changes you’ll need to make. Tapping your web partner is a great idea here, too. Your vendor should be able to identify existing third-party cookie warnings, which can help shape your audit.
For example, while we were updating a client’s email marketing integration recently, Chrome notified our developer that our client’s vendor was sending third-party cookies. We then reached out to the vendor to continue the conversation, knowing that those cookies had to be addressed.
Identify Affected Cookies
The goal of your audit is to identify all third-party cookies that won’t make the cut. Don’t stop by just listing the cookie, either. Review what function it serves and the role it plays in your organization’s digital footprint. You may have to get rid of the cookie, but that doesn’t mean you have to ditch the strategy it’s tied to.
Reach Out to Your Vendors
Ask vendors about their plans to handle the transition away from third-party cookies, and feel out whether they’ll still be able to offer the service they currently provide. Consider it a red flag if the vendor is uninformed or unprepared; you might have to seek out alternatives if there’s even the slightest chance your current vendor will be defunct by the end of the year.
Design Alternatives
The end of third-party cookies is daunting, but it’s also exciting. Take this opportunity to innovate on your users’ behalf. How can you design engaging new experiences that still exceed their expectations? That’s more than possible, so long as you have the right tools in place.
This could be a self-hosted analytics tool you build yourself or new local storage solutions to replace the role of cookies. You might also consider a fully authenticated experience for the users of your site. Lean on a trusted partner here, too. Vendors with website expertise can guide you toward the right solution for you and your users.
Cookies on the Brain?
For many organizations, this is the most they’ve thought about cookies in years. Third-party cookies have become so essential to building a business online, and yet they’ve largely flown under our radar. But while this change may feel overwhelming, making the switch doesn’t have to be.
Here at Oomph, we see this as a golden opportunity for organizations to put their users first, and we’re already taking steps to help our clients do just that.
Need a hand bringing your website into a world beyond third-party cookies? Let’s talk about it.
The Brief
Cultivating A Meaningful Website
Much like nurturing planted seeds, a digital platform needs careful attention to ensure success. While the website originally fit the needs of its audience, as FFRI’s programs continued to grow over time, so has the need to reframe the digital presence. As new content is continuously added to an inflexible structure, valuable information competes for customers’ attention, leaving messages to fall through the cracks.
While the client team was aware of some pain points, they had no clear direction to begin to make improvements — where to start? What changes would have the most impact? What can they do themselves vs. what do they need help with? Farm Fresh RI needed a quick set of valuable deliverables that could provide a foundation of understanding and roadmap for improvements.
The Customer Experience Audit
Our design team is passionate about helping organizations thrive. We also understand that some organizations do not have the resources to support a full-scale website redesign. Oomph has explored ways to offer value to those in FFRI’s position — an affordable, efficient set of exercises that can create a “Guiding Star” to help clients steer internal initiatives towards iterative improvements.
We created our Customer Experience Audit to provide a streamlined yet comprehensive look at an organization’s digital presence. It combines impactful exercises that uncover user experience (UX) gaps, accessibility issues, and opportunities to improve content and navigation. The goal is to empower organizations with the knowledge and direction they need to implement changes, whether independently or with our support — changes that address their audience’s needs directly, and therefore, the organization’s impact.
The Approach
Tilling the Existing Farm Fresh RI Website
We focused our audit on FFRI’s public-facing site, the primary audience’s first touch point. Our aim was to highlight any barriers preventing these consumers from efficiently accessing information or completing key tasks. Though there is a mobile App in the ecosystem, we focused on the introduction of the brand and its value, thinking that if the site]s initial impression were stronger, more customers would utilize other digital tools.
Through the audit, we uncovered several key areas for improvement that could significantly enhance the user experience:

Accessibility Gaps
Through an automated and manual scan, we found and organized a number of accessibility and usability issues across the site.
- Clickable hero images that lacked clear visual cues
- Insufficient color contrast in key areas
- Inconsistent translation options for non-English-speaking users

Organizing Content
Large hero images push important content below the fold, making it difficult for users to access crucial information quickly. By placing content above the fold, the site can quickly show users they have landed in the right place. We suggested revising the layout to shorten the height of page hero imagery, which helps users reach key resources with minimal scrolling.

Finding the Content
The journey to find critical information, such as farmers’ market details, is complicated and fragmented across multiple pages. By consolidating this information, we recommended streamlining the user journey while also freeing up space to highlight other essential offerings.

The Results
Supporting a Better Harvest
This audit and roadmap project wasn’t just about identifying existing problems — it was about providing actionable next steps. It was not meant to lock Farm Fresh into working with us to complete those steps, either — even though we would be happy to — but rather to facilitate and supply them with the tools to push forward internally.
With our comprehensive roadmap in hand, Farm Fresh RI is already implementing our suggestions. The primary contact for the project noted that our audit validated many of their internal concerns and provided a clear path for solving issues they had struggled with for years. The deliverables included:
- A SortSite accessibility audit with outlined improvements
- Initial user journeys & information architecture “North Star” ideal to discuss internally
- Quick wireframes for the Homepage and Farmers Market Listing page to show how a new page flow can support customers
- Plan and direction for next steps and what they can do now
- Conversation about how we can help in the future
Our improvement roadmap equips Farm Fresh RI to serve their community more effectively and deliver on their mission. If your organization needs data and expert advice that sets a path forward to an improved customer experience, reach out and contact us. For a small investment, your organization can gain clarity and direction with actionable short- and long-term activities.
The Digital Customer Experience Roadmap
Would your organization benefit from a Digital Customer Experience Roadmap?
- Do you hear of customer complaints through email or phone outreach?
- Do you feel your navigation is bloated with too much content and not enough organization?
- Do pages look too similar, making customer miss important content or get lost within pages that all look the same?
- Have portions of your organization “gone rogue” to create sub-sites and offshoots they can more easily control?
If your digital platforms —website, e-commerce site, mobile App — suffer from any of these common problems, our exercise will define next steps to address these potential issues. Download our information sheet (pdf) and then get in touch with us to discuss your needs.
Finding yourself bogged down with digital analytics? Spending hours just collecting and organizing information from your websites and apps? Looker Studio could be the answer to all your problems (well, maybe not all of them, but at least where data analytics are concerned).
This business intelligence tool from Google is designed to solve one of the biggest headaches out there for marketers: turning mountains of website data into actionable insights. Anyone who’s ever gone down the proverbial rabbit hole scouring Google Analytics for the right metrics or manually inputting numbers from a spreadsheet into their business intelligence platform knows that organizing this data is no small task. With Looker Studio, you can consolidate and simplify complicated data, freeing up more time for actual analysis.
With so many customizable features and templates, it does take time to set up a Looker Studio report that works for you. Since Google’s recent switch from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, you might also find that certain Looker Studio reports aren’t working the way they used to.
Not to worry: Our Oomph engineers help clients configure and analyze data with Looker Studio every day, and we’ve learned a few tips along the way. Here’s what to know to make Looker Studio work for your business.
The benefits of using Looker Studio for data visualization and analysis
Formerly known as Google Data Studio, Looker Studio pulls, organizes, and visualizes data in one unified reporting experience. For marketers who rely heavily on data to make informed decisions, Looker Studio can save precious time and energy, which you can then invest in analyzing and interpreting data.
Key benefits of using Looker Studio include:
- Connecting data from multiple sources: The platform can unify data from a mind-boggling 800+ sources and 600+ data connectors, which means you can upload and integrate multiple data sets into one comprehensive report. This not only saves time, but also provides more accurate insights into business performance for organizations with complex digital environments.
- User-friendly insights: Looker Studio’s visual dashboards are easy to interpret, customize, and share – even with executives who might not be as digitally fluent as you. You can choose from a variety of drag-and-drop data visualization options, such as charts, graphs, and tables, or use Looker Studio’s pre-designed visualizations.
- Powerful customization: Want to be informed the minute your form conversion rate changes? With Looker Studio, you can set up alerts to notify you of significant changes in your data, enabling you to adjust your marketing strategy and optimize ROI in real time. You can also generate reports to track your progress and share them with your clients or team members.
How Oomph uses Looker Studio
As a digital-first company in the business of helping other digital-first companies, we’re big fans of Looker Studio. We think the platform is a great way to share trends on your websites and apps in an easy-to-digest way, making monthly or quarterly reporting much more efficient.
Whether you’re looking for basic insights or need sophisticated analysis, Looker Studio’s visualization capabilities can support smarter, more informed digital decision-making. Here’s a peek at some of the metrics we monitor for our own business, including:
- Number of users
- New users versus returning users
- Average time spent on site and on page
- Top pages viewed
- Traffic sources
- Traffic by device
- Event tracking and conversion rates

We also use the platform to drill deeper, comparing trends over time, identifying seasonal fluctuations and assessing the performance of specific campaigns. We leverage features like dashboards and filters in Looker Studio to give our clients an interactive view of their data.
How Looker Studio Works With GA4
Google Analytics, now known as GA4, is one of the primary tools we connect to Looker Studio. GA4 is the latest version of Google’s popular analytics platform and offers new features and functionality compared with its predecessor, Universal Analytics (UA), including new data visualization capabilities.
As many companies migrate over to GA4, they may be wondering if reporting will be similar between GA4 and Looker Studio – and if you need both.
While GA4 reports may challenge Looker Studio’s capabilities, Looker Studio provides a variety of features that go beyond what GA4 can do on its own. While GA4 dashboards and reports just include GA4 data, Looker Studio can import data from other sources as well. This means you can use Looker Studio to track trends in your site’s performance, regardless of the data source.
Looker Studio also has a unique feature called “LookML,” which allows users to create custom data models and transformations. This means you can tailor your data to your specific needs, rather than being limited by GA4’s built-in reporting. Finally, Looker Studio’s robust sharing and collaboration features allow teams to share data and insights easily and efficiently.
If your company set up Looker Studio before switching to GA4, you may notice a few metrics are now out of sync. Here are a few adjustments to get everything working correctly:
- Average time on page: This was previously a standard feature in UA that’s no longer available in GA4. To configure, you’ll need to track the “user engagement” metric divided by “number of sessions.”
- Bounce rate: Tracking bounce rate with GA4 now takes an additional step as well. To configure, subtract the “engagement rate” metric from 1 to arrive at your bounce rate.
- Events: Simply update your Looker Studio connection settings to use the new GA4 event schema and ensure that you’re using the correct event names and parameters in your LookML code.
How To Set Up a Looker Studio Report
- Choose a template for your dashboard or create one from scratch. If you’re not sure, you can browse through templates to get an idea of what Looker can do.

- Connect your data source. Looker supports a long list of sources, including Google, MySQL, AWS Redshift, and more. Don’t worry if your data isn’t in Google – Looker will likely be able to connect to it regardless.


- Choose your metrics. These are the specific data points you want to track and analyze in your report. You can customize your metrics to fit your specific needs.
- Build your dashboard. You can add charts, tables, and other visualizations to help you understand your data. Looker makes it easy to drag and drop these elements into place.
- Share it with others. You can either create a share link so that others can access the dashboard directly or you can set up automatic updates to be sent on a regular basis. This makes it easy for others to stay up-to-date on changes and progress.

A Powerful Path To Data Insights
The digital landscape is growing more fragmented and complex by the day, but tools like Looker Studio make it infinitely easier to find your path forward. Taking the time to configure and customize the platform can deliver major ROI by helping you understand user needs, pinpoint website strengths and challenges, and craft the right digital strategy.
Crunched for time or not sure where to start? Oomph can help take the hassle out of data analysis by setting up and monitoring your Looker Studio dashboards. Get in touch to chat about your needs.