Updated on May 13th, 2026

SUNY Niagara: Turning a College Website Into a $2M Revenue Driver

When SUNY Niagara's website scored just 13 out of 100 on Google PageSpeed—weighed down by 160 plugins and unreliable hosting that left pages going dark without warning—it was clear something had to change.

Working with Northern and Pantheon, the college took an unconventional approach: treating their website as a business asset, not just a digital brochure. Their RFP stated plainly that the site's primary purpose was revenue generation, and while this framing is uncommon in higher ed, it's also long overdue.

SUNY Niagara Student Life webpage shown alongside three result tiles: performance score improved from 13 to 92, SEO score improved from 78 to 92, and enrollment up 24 percent. Read the full SUNY Niagara case study on Pantheon. 

The results one year after launch:

  • Performance score: 13 → 92
  • SEO score: 78 → 92
  • Page views: +15% year-over-year
  • Enrollment: +24%, translating to an additional $1.9–$2.1 million annually

With Pantheon's reliable infrastructure and Northern handling development, SUNY's Web Marketing Specialist Matthew Gagliardi—essentially a one-person web team—has been freed up to build new revenue-generating initiatives rather than focusing on fighting fires.

Read the full case study on Pantheon.io →

Jay Ménard from Northern stands smiling beside Hal Legg, Director of PR at SUNY Niagara, who is presenting from a podium with a laptop, at the NCMPR conference.

Northern's Jay Ménard and SUNY Niagara's Hal Legg at NCMPR, sharing how a user-experience-driven, data-informed approach enables marketers to consistently deliver the right message to the right audience.

"Pantheon and Northern make it possible for our team to spend time dreaming up new avenues that will attract revenue. And you can't do that if your IT environment doesn't free you up."

— Hal Legg, Director of PR, SUNY Niagara

Tompkins Cortland Community College: From Chaos to Control in 10 Months

When Steve Erwin joined Tompkins Cortland Community College as UI/UX Designer and Web Lead, he inherited a website that "had wallowed for years without anyone to really own it"—3,100 pages with no oversight, unpredictable navigation, and a confusing information architecture.

What followed was a complete rebuild with their small team working alongside Northern and Pantheon. This translated to a full content audit, new information architecture, original designs, and a January 2025 launch with just 500 strategically organized pages. The partnership weathered an unexpected test when malicious bots spiked traffic by 2,650%—an incident resolved quickly thanks to rapid response from Northern and Pantheon's deployment of a web application firewall.

Tompkins Cortland Community College Community Members webpage shown alongside two result tiles: pages reduced from 3,100 to approximately 500, and time to launch of 10 months. Read the full Tompkins Cortland case study on Pantheon. 

Key outcomes:

  • Research to launch: 10 months
  • Pages reduced from 3,100 to ~500 (now ~750)
  • In-house publishing capabilities: ~90% handled by TC3's small team
  • Security incident: from emergency to long-term security upgrade in ~1 week

Erwin's philosophy shapes how TC3 uses its agency partnership: "I'd rather pay the agency to build me tools so that I can use those tools moving forward. Rather than needing to pay them for every change I want to make."

Read the full case study on Pantheon.io →

Steve Erwin from Tompkins Cortland Community College and Christine Saunders from Northern smiling together at DrupalCon 2026, with a Drupal welcome sign visible in the background.

Northern's Christine Saunders catching up with Steve Erwin, UI/UX Designer and Web Lead at TC3, at DrupalCon 2026.

"The ideal web host is one where they fade away, and I don't even think about it, because it's just working."

— Steve Erwin, UI/UX Designer and Web Lead, TC3

If your higher ed website is holding your team back rather than driving your mission forward, we'd love to continue the conversation.