Case studies / Education
Case studyA multi-campus website platform for a school group
A school group with several campuses and languages moved to one website platform with a shared design system and campus microsites, keeping the brand consistent while campus teams update their own content.
Overview
A bilingual school group in Southeast Asia with primary and secondary campuses in several cities, serving local and expatriate families and teaching in English and the local language.
Scale. Five campuses, each with its own website, and content in up to three languages, maintained by small communications teams with mixed technical experience.
The challenge
Over the years each campus had commissioned its own website. By the time this project began, the group had several sites on different platforms, built by different agencies, each with its own colours, menus and version of the logo.
Campus websites were inconsistent. A family comparing two campuses saw what looked like two unrelated schools, and fees, term dates and admissions steps were presented differently on each, sometimes with conflicting information.
Updates were slow. Some sites needed an agency to change anything beyond a news post, so small changes waited weeks and campus teams worked around the problem with PDF downloads and social media.
Languages were handled unevenly. One campus had full translations, another translated only its home page, and a third relied on an automatic translation widget that families found unreliable.
Families struggled to find essentials. Admissions information, fees and contact details were buried in different places on each site, and site search was either missing or returned old pages.
Running several platforms also meant several hosting contracts, several sets of security updates and no shared view of analytics across the group.
The solution
A shared design system defines colours, typography, components and layouts once for the whole group. Every campus site is built from the same components, so the brand stays consistent and improvements reach every campus at the same time.
A single content management system hosts the group site and each campus microsite. Group content such as the mission, policies and leadership is maintained centrally, and each campus manages its own news, events, staff and pages within its microsite.
Every page can be published in each of the group's languages, with clear indicators of which translations are missing. Families can switch language on any page and land on the equivalent page, not the home page.
Admissions forms are consistent across campuses and pass enquiries straight to the admissions team and the student information system. Application fees can be paid online.
Site-wide search covers every campus and language, and helps families find fees, term dates and admissions steps quickly. Maps show each campus location and transport options.
Analytics are configured consistently, so the group can compare how families use each campus site and which pages lead to enquiries.
The engagement
- Seven months
- Five specialists
- Content audit, information architecture, shared design system and templates, CMS with campus microsites and multilingual content, admissions forms and search, integrations with the student information system, email, analytics, payments and maps, content migration and campus-by-campus launch.
Integrations
- Student information system
- Analytics
- Payments
- Maps
How we delivered it
- 01
Audit content and agree structure
Five weeks
We audited content across every campus site, removed duplicates and outdated pages and agreed a shared structure: what is common to the group, what each campus owns and how every page appears in each language.
- 02
Build the design system and templates
Ten weeks
We built a shared design system and a set of page templates for campus home pages, news, events, admissions, curriculum and staff, tested with families and campus teams on phones and desktops.
- 03
Migrate content
Six weeks
Campus teams rewrote and migrated their content into the new structure with our support, and translations were completed for every page that families rely on.
- 04
Launch campus by campus
Seven weeks
Campuses launched one at a time, with redirects from old addresses, training for each communications team and a short period of close support after launch.
Results
- Consistent branding across every campus
- Same-day updates by campus teams
- Key information easier to find in every language
- One platform to host, maintain and secure
Branding is consistent. Every campus site looks and behaves like part of the same group, while still showing the character of each campus through its own photography, stories and events.
Campus teams update content faster. News, events and page changes are published the same day without an agency, and the PDF workarounds have largely gone.
Families find what they need more easily. Fees, term dates and admissions steps sit in the same place on every campus site, in every language, and search returns current pages.
Templates let campuses own their content without breaking the design. Communications teams build new pages from approved components, so the sites stay consistent as content grows.
Running one platform has reduced hosting and maintenance effort, and security updates are applied once for every campus.
Each campus still tells its own story, but now it is clearly one family of schools.
What made the difference
Templates let campuses own content without breaking design.
