Aims wanted to address the significant Hispanic/Latino population at the college by creating a Spanish version of their website to provide a higher level of inclusivity and accessibility. They also wanted a translation solution that was easy to maintain, and that could be implemented within a very tight time frame.
Aims Community College is a fully accredited two-year college nestled on 185 acres in beautiful Greeley, Colorado. Aims offers over 200 degrees and certificates from more than 50 academic areas of study. With more than 4,000 daytime, evening, weekend, and online course offerings each year, students are able to flexibly complete coursework part-time or full-time. Aims serves a diverse community of 8,400 students with an average class size of 15:1. Students like Aims because of the affordability, access to degrees that lead to jobs in today’s market, and the college’s commitment to excellence.
Aims serves a diverse community of 8,400 students with an average class size of 15:1. Students like Aims because of the affordability, access to degrees that lead to jobs in today’s market, and the college’s commitment to excellence.
Aims wanted to address the significant Hispanic/Latino population at the college by creating a Spanish version of their website to provide a higher level of inclusivity and accessibility. They also wanted a translation solution that was easy to maintain, and that could be implemented within a very tight time frame.
Hunter considered two other localization solutions. The first option natively translates content with a push of a button, but Hunter would have to manually go through and approve the translations every time in the CMS. This route would waste a lot of time and complicate the approval process. The second solution would take a copy of the site and host it on their servers.
“The problem with this is that much of our website is password-protected,” said Hunter. “That meant any of the content that was protected wouldn’t be translated. This is why we ended up with Localize: it was simple to set up, has the ability to auto approve content, can easily modify and order translations, and has the ability to translate our password-protected content securely.”
"One of the most important features we were looking for was the ability to automatically approve and translate all the content on our websites." - Hunter Wilson, Web Manager
Aims Community College found Localize extremely easy to use. Hunter said his favorite feature is the ability to auto approve pending translations and modify the translations with the Localize editor. He’s also excited to use the document translation feature, where he can upload documents like PDFs and have them instantly AI translated for export again. As a busy college, translated paperwork is a must-have solution.
“The Localize team was wonderful and supportive every step of the way. A big thank you to our Customer Success Manager, Linda, for understanding our needs and taking the time to walk us through things we might have missed,” said Hunter. “The Aims team was also incredibly busy the last couple of weeks prior to launch and Linda did a great job of supporting as necessary.”
The main draw for Aims Community College was the ability to auto approve pending translations, securely translate their password-protected parts of the site, and order human translations quickly and easily from the Localize dashboard.
Aims Community College can now boast a top-tier community college website that allows for quick and easy translation of their content for Spanish-speaking audiences. One of the college’s key strategies is to better serve diverse populations. Within that strategy is the goal of improving enrollment retention and degree completion for their Latinx populations. Having a multilingual website will be a big part of that strategy.
"There has been a lot of excitement from the Center for Diversity & Inclusion Department on campus as well as the Latinx Engagement & Support Coordinators since the introduction of our multilingual website." - Hunter Wilson, Web Manager Campus Safety and Security page in English and translated to Spanish using Localize.
The website is the first impression for almost all prospective students. Having a professional and inclusive website sets the tone for the type of education they can expect and the types of professional interactions they will have with the faculty and staff at the college. Having the ability to quickly switch languages helps a student show off the college to a non-English speaking parent or help non-native speakers better understand complicated enrollment processes in the language of their choice.
Aims Community College has over 52% first-generation students and more specifically, their Hispanic student population stands at over 33%. The enormous success of this initial website localization confirms that Aims Community College will have a translation feature on the website for the foreseeable future.