An A+ Transformation: How Education First Rebuilt 486,000 Pages Across 60+ Languages in 1 Hour

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

Connecting the world through education, language, and travel, Education First (opens in a new window) has helped millions of people explore new places, experience new cultures, and learn more about the world and themselves since 1965. With over 640 schools in over 100 countries and regions, it’s safe to say they’ve been busy over the past 6 decades—but never busy enough to let innovation pass them by. Before going headless, Education First was grappling with a clunky, custom-built CMS that just wasn’t making the grade. So when a new wave of headless CMS solutions promised a faster, more streamlined way to manage their 486,000 pages, they didn’t hesitate to make the switch. The result? A brand-new site built in just 8 weeks—how’s that for A+ efficiency?

The custom-built challenges that led to change

Education First’s journey to Storyblok began 4 years ago with a team that was heavily invested in their custom-built enterprise CMS. But the system had become sluggish, restricting teams from delivering projects on time, among other issues, including: 

• Poor user experience across multiple teams, which felt like running through a labyrinth of twists and turns with every project. 
• A steep learning curve with insufficient, often cryptic documentation for new starters.
• Only a small group of certified contractors could use and navigate the labyrinth system, restricting innovation and project on-time delivery.
• Any change in content, update, or end code (on the front end) was slow, leading to never-ending bottlenecks in content delivery—we’ve all been there.  

There were challenges across the board, but delivery speed was the resounding issue that needed to be solved first to allow the team to meet its goals. Content personalization was a close second, as this remains one of Education First's core ambitions for their web experience. The homework: select a CMS and tech stack that enables them to enhance speed, agility, and personalization for their users everywhere.

Doing their homework for the right provider

Education First’s previous homegrown CMS setup felt a bit like running a rocky, uphill marathon in flip-flops: slow, painful, and certainly not a joy to complete. So when the team noticed the growing presence of headless CMSs in the market (like all good students), they did their research before deciding that Storyblok was the one for them. But why exactly?  

• The flexibility of accessing APIs that can restructure content for omnichannel experiences.
• 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 to connect different applications and integrations of their choice.
• The Visual Editor enables a live preview of content that makes collaboration a breeze across different teams. This is vital to Education First’s product site, which has 211 registered editors across 70+ markets and different team roles.

But the question is: did we get the gold star?

Did headless pass the test?

No surprises here: a headless CMS was just what they needed. Education First now has a global multilingual website bursting with over 9,000 pages and 54+ language variations that can be published faster than you can brew your morning coffee and whip up some breakfast: in under one hour. Doing the math, that’s over 486,000 web pages generated and published to QA in 60 minutes flat. Then, once approved, pages could be pushed to production in minutes. These efficiency gains enabled their team to develop its website in just 8 weeks, compared to the previous 4 to 6 months—yikes.  

If that wasn’t already impressive enough, they also revamped lots of their product websites from server-side to static-rendered, delivering lightning-fast page load speeds and simpler content management. But the real cherry on top was that the Education First team leveraged Storyblok to deliver website improvement in real-time based on page visitors and user behaviour using Next.js. This allowed them to enrich data as needed, when needed, despite its inherent static nature—a magic wand to sprinkle real-time personalization enhancements.

Their new headless approach even allowed them to get creative with their tech. Education First built a powerhouse of a tech stack, integrating and connecting different systems to make it easier to share content seamlessly, champion effective teamwork, and enhance collaborative productivity with the help of automated workflow tasks. With their new digital setup, Education First is ready to shake things up in education: one page and one language at a time.