Education First: 9000+ Pages in 54+ Languages Published in 1 Hour

• Headquarters: Lucerne, Switzerland
• Technology: Next.js, React

Connecting the world through language, education, and travel - Education First (EF) never sleeps with over 640+ schools in over 100 countries worldwide. Whether it's through diving into a new or familiar language on an exchange program, prepping for a big university entrance exam, or brushing up on leadership skills with a tailored development course for global business titans, Education First’s outstanding portfolio of international and local programs hosted online has to be dynamic and reactive to a globe-trotting audience.

Opening the world of new adventures

• Migrated a global site with over 9000 pages and over 54 language variations that can be generated, whipped up, and published to QA within an hour
• Develop a brand new site in just eight weeks, compared to the previous 4 to 6 months on their previous system—take that, old-school!

Education First saw the growing presence of headless CMSs within the market and decided to jump on board. This kickstarted their journey to make the move to a headless setup, as their previous homegrown system felt like an uphill rocky marathon in flip flops - slow and painful. Storyblok became a perfect fit for them, thanks to benefits including:

• The flexibility of accessing APIs that can restructure content for omnichannel experiences
• Having a programmatic API that handles component schemas and content migration automatically
• The ability to choose the templating frameworks for each individual team project across the company
• Developers stick with their favorite frameworks (React and Next.js) rather than having to pick up and learn new ones
• A best-of-breed setup for EF to connect different applications and integrations of their choice
• The Visual Editor enables live preview of content that makes collaboration a breeze across different teams. This is vital to EF's product site, which has 211 registered editors across 60 markets and different team roles.

Picture this: a global multilingual website bursting with over 9000 pages and 54 language variations that can be published faster than you can brew your morning coffee and make breakfast—all in under one hour! The brand developed its site in just eight weeks, compared to the ancient times of 4 to 6 months.

Challenges leading to change

Education First’s journey to Storyblok spans the last 4 years in a 7-year saga. The organization was heavily invested in a homegrown enterprise CMS—yet it became slow over time and restricted teams from delivering projects on time. The main pain points identified were:

• The poor user experience across multiple teams (editors and developers) felt like running through a labyrinth of twists and turns
• A steep learning curve with insufficient documentation that was more cryptic than a treasure map
• Only a small group of certified contractors could use and navigate the labyrinth (system), restricting innovation and delivery of projects on time
• Any change in content, update, and end code (on the frontend) was slow (like paint to dry in the middle of winter)

There were challenges across the board. Yet, at its root, delivery speed was the main resounding issue that needed to be solved first. The main ambition at the time, which is still a continuous focus for EF, is the ability to tap into content personalization. With this, EF considered the technology stack and requirements for its next-generation websites.

Revolutionizing Web Development: EF's Speed and Innovation

EF spun out an entire global multilingual website with over 9000 pages and over 54 language variations (doing that math, that’s over 486,000+ pages!) in just one hour! Going supersonic, this can all be generated and published to QA in just 1 hour. On top of that, the generated pages can then be promoted to production environments in minutes.

The brand also revamped many of their product websites from server-side to static-rendered. As a result, pages load faster at lightning speed and are easier to manage - talk about giving a Formula 1 team a run for its speed and money!

The real cherry on top: EF also uses Storyblok to deliver enhancements to its website in real-time based on what its page visitors and customers are up to. This allows EF to enrich as needed, when needed, despite its inherent static nature—a magic wand to sprinkle real-time personalization enhancements!

Education First learned that using the best technologies helps them work better. They integrated and connected different systems to make it easier to share content seamlessly and champion teamwork and collaboration together, with the help of automated tasks within their workflows to make things as smooth as butter. Education First has turned the educational world upside down —one page and one language at a time.