98% performance score for best-in-class EdTech experience

Phased approach to deliver exceptional website performance for Dukes Plus

Dukes Plus brings together a family of educational experience providers with a vision of a world where all students are future-ready for any educational or professional challenge.

What the client wanted

• Custom WordPress build
• Best-in-class UX
• Integrated learning management system (LMS)
• eCommerce functionality
• Phased approach to launch MVP then evolve site

Dukes Plus wanted a website with strong UX, SEO, LMS, and eCommerce functionality at its core, with a longer-term roadmap towards a best-in-class EdTech experience.

Dukes Plus is a family of specialised consultancy services and educational experience providers. Together, the brands in the Dukes Plus family provide the highest standards of university preparation, once-in-a-lifetime industry experiences, tuition, summer schools and day camps.

Phased approach with budget prioritisation

Dukes Plus needed a new website that would evolve over time. We were tasked with producing an MVP following best practice using our framework to form a foundation, and a solid roadmap to continue building out the site into the future.

This strategy provided value for the client straight away, while enabling us to dedicate attention to more complex areas of the site in later phases of work. 

However, taking a phased approach brings its own challenges of clarifying technical specifications and setting budget and workload priorities for each phase, so we worked through a detailed requirements gathering phase with the client first.

Dukes Plus wanted optimal UX and eCommerce functionality from the outset, before gradually building towards their future vision of a full network of websites and apps that track users and interactions, with customer segmentation, clear touchpoints and long-term pathway tracks. This involves:

• Hubspot integration
• Cross-site tracking
• LMS
• eCommerce 
• Mega nav
• Cohesion 
• Enhanced search functionality
• High standard accessibility throughout including excellent keyboard navigation 

Maintaining the highest standards with a phased approach to development

Dukes Plus wanted a high-quality, high performing website with best-in-class UX and a strong position for SEO from the outset. 

While we were committed to a phased approach so the website could be launched more rapidly and evolve over time, it was crucial to maintain the highest standards for UX, site speed and performance, accessibility, and follow web design and web development best practices. 

Helping customers get to the right place

Dukes Plus brings together a family of educational services and experience providers, and websites for each of these brands. It was important for the Dukes Plus website to provide effective and intuitive routes to subsidiary brands, so customers could easily navigate to what they wanted to find or purchase.

And with that, Dukes Plus wanted GDPR-compliant data capture enabling them to track journeys through to individual brand sites, to better understand and communicate with their customers.

Phased approach and managing budget

We followed our standardised process for website projects, beginning with a discovery phase with workshops, technical specification, prioritisation, and clarifying the brief. 

We then took a phased approach to create an MVP (most viable product) with a clear plan for website evolution with more features getting rolled out over time.

During the initial design phase, we completed wireframing and user interface (UI) design for a WordPress site that utilised WooCommerce, styled to fit with Dukes Plus’ brand. We also integrated LearnDash as the learning management system (LMS), which was similarly styled in line with the brand, for a cohesive digital experience.

After launching the site, there was an internal handover to one of our Always Evolving® pods, which involved walking through design files and technical set up for more of our developers who could continue to build out new features and functionality. 

Always Evolving®, our core service, delivers iterative website enhancements. Each month, we roll out improvements across web design and functionality, site speed and performance, conversion optimisation, and more. This way of working perfectly aligns with a phased approach to website development. 

During the most recent phases of work, we’ve reviewed and improved the user journey, added new customer account functionality, designed and built landing pages, and reviewed and added to product pages. 

We’re also making additional improvements to navigation design, enabling users to find what they are looking for easily and drive traffic to where it needs to go. 

Exceptional site speed and performance

Dukes Plus was designed and developed to high standards with exceptional site speed and performance, supporting Dukes Plus with their goals of a best-in-class EdTech experience and a strong position for SEO from the outset.

The website boasts high site performance scores including 98% for performance on desktop; 93% for accessibility on mobile and 96% on desktop; 100% for SEO; and 100% for best practice.

This was achieved through various technical choices during the site build, for instance image optimisation to serve images at different sizes for different devices, and ongoing optimisation.

Directing customers to the right place

A key aim for the new Dukes Plus website was to direct web visitors to the correct place, which might be another website within its family of educational services and experience providers. 

We implemented a multi-step questionnaire to capture leads and direct people to the right place, while also gathering information so Dukes Plus could more deeply understand its customers and their educational journeys, to continue offering helpful and relevant next steps.

We also enhanced the basic native functionality of the WordPress menu to create a mega nav. WordPress menus aren’t set up for mega navs, which added layers complexities to this work, however choosing a native WordPress functionality was a better long term solution than relying on a third-party plugin.

And finally, we used native WordPress search functionality but enhanced this using Relevanssi to help web visitors quickly find the information they need.

Highly visual back-end editing experience

We ensured there was a highly visual and usable block-based editing experience for the team at Dukes Plus. They can update the website using blocks that look the same in the back-end as they do on the front-end, making the page editing experience feel seamless.

Tracking opportunities for the future

We also investigated cross-site tracking across the digital estate, so that Dukes Plus has the option to use an analytics account that reports on the family of business websites collectively in the future. 

As part of their future roadmap, this will give Dukes Plus the option to enable tracking through customer journeys across the subsidiary websites, helping them better understand and cater to their customers.