Education First: 9000+ Pages in 60+ Languages Published in 1 Hour

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

Education First (EF) created a global site with 9000+ pages and 54+ language variations that could be generated and published to QA within an hour. The brand developed its site in just eight weeks, compared to the previous 4 to 6 months.

When speed is not on the side of growth

Education First’s journey to Storyblok spans the last 4 years in a 7-year story. The organization was heavily invested in a homegrown enterprise CMS. In terms of functionality, the system 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)
• A steep learning curve with insufficient documentation
• Only a small group of certified contractors could use the system, restricting innovation and delivery of projects on time
• Any change in content, update, and end code (on the frontend) was slow

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.

Why did Education First choose Storyblok and adopt a Next.js framework?

Education First was aware of the growing presence of headless CMSs in the market. This prompted them to make the move to a headless setup. 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 are able to use familiar frameworks (React and Next.js) rather than learning new ones
• A best-of-breed setup for EF to connect different applications and integrations of their choice
• The Visual Editor that enables live-preview of content and can be easily used across different teams. This is vital to EF's product site, with 211 registered editors across 60 markets and different team roles. Teams are able to edit and collaborate in a streamlined manner.

Results, Learnings & Progress

An entire global site with more than 9,000 pages containing 60+ language variations (486,000+ pages) can be generated and published to QA in 1 hour. Promotion of the generated pages to production environments is then achieved in minutes.

The brand also converted many of their product websites from server-side to static-rendered. As a result, pages load faster and are easier to manage.

EF also uses Storyblok to deliver enhancements in real-time to their website based on a customer’s actions and attributes. With this happening in real-time, despite having an inherent static nature, the organization can enrich as they need, when they need.

Education First learned that using the best technologies helps them work better. They integrated different systems to make it easier to share content and work together. As a result, EF have also automated some tasks and created a system to help their teams work more efficiently.