When Her Campus Media made the decision to migrate to WordPress VIP, they were managing a network of over 400 college chapters, thousands of student contributors, and millions of monthly readers — all on a platform that was showing its age. What happened next became one of the most compelling content transformation stories in digital media.
The Challenge: Scale Without Sacrifice
Her Campus Media isn’t a typical publisher. With student journalists and editors operating across hundreds of university chapters, the platform needed to be intuitive enough for a first-year student to use on day one — but powerful enough to support the professional editorial standards of their flagship properties.
Their previous platform struggled on both fronts. Site performance was inconsistent. Core Web Vitals were suffering. And critically, content teams lacked the data-driven culture the editorial leadership knew they needed to compete for eyeballs against much better-resourced publishers.
The Solution: WordPress VIP + Parse.ly
The migration to WordPress VIP addressed the performance issues immediately. Google’s Core Web Vitals improved dramatically, and the knock-on effect on organic search traffic was swift and significant.
But the bigger transformation came from Parse.ly. VP of Content Rosanne Salvatore had joined with a mandate to build a data-driven editorial culture — and Parse.ly became the engine that made it possible.
“Using insights both in real time and historically is the best way to make a content strategy. Every editor needs to use this data all day, every day — it’s a huge part of our editorial strategy.”
Rosanne Salvatore, VP Content, Her Campus Media
The Results: Fighting Above Their Weight
The combination of improved Core Web Vitals, faster page loads, and a data-driven editorial approach powered by Parse.ly has driven substantial growth in organic traffic. Her Campus Media can now operate with the analytics sophistication of publishers many times their size.
“Partnering with a best-of-breed company like WordPress VIP lets us fight with bigger, better-resourced companies for eyeballs.”
David Lievense, Her Campus Media
Perhaps more importantly, Her Campus Media’s student journalists are now building the analytics habits that will define their careers in media — learning to use Parse.ly data every day, the way every professional editorial team should.