Sector(s)
The Modern American School is a leading learning institution with a mission, to nurture generations of global thinkers and responsible citizens through their global curriculum.
Vardot and the Modern American School share a long history of working together in redefining higher education digital experiences - and this project launched in early 2021 marks a particular milestone: The Modern American School is the first Drupal 9 higher education digital experience in the region.
The Modern American School is the first Drupal 9 higher education digital experience built on Drupal 9 in the region.
About the project
Requirements and Goals:
- Enhance UX features by upgrading the website to Drupal 9.
- Ensure that all the latest best practices and standards are adhered to when it comes to privacy, accessibility, and security.
- Flexible personalization when building landing pages.
- Faster and easier content publishing for the content marketing team.
- Critical integrations with technologies and 3rd party tools.
- Faster page loading.
- Easier user journeys for parents and website visitors using web forms on site.
- Content structure enhancement.
- Continuous delivery and support for the new website.
What We Delivered:
A full upgrade to Drupal 9's advanced and superior UX features. These include:
Personalization Capabilities
Through the use of Layout Builder the Modern American School team can now structure what used to be 'Paragraphs' to much easier content 'Blocks'.
This user-friendly feature in the CMS allows for visual building and structuring of any page through simple drag and drop - enhancing the school's ability to personalize landing pages and user experiences for website visitors - in addition, to highlight particular content for better communication.
The feedback by the users was overwhelmingly positive - citing the infinite flexibility for personalization as a major boost in their bid to develop unique digital experiences for their website visitors.
Critical Integrations
The Modern American School wanted to introduce rich UX features such as virtual tours and video content. Their CMS - Varbase - which is upgraded to enable Drupal 9 site building - provided them with the flexibility needed to integrate all their preferred technologies while ensuring superior website performance and page loading.
Integrations included: Matterport, Vimeo, Issuu, and social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube.
Content Structure and SEO
The content structure became cluttered and confusing for search engines looking to index the myriad of content formats that the Modern American School published online. Vardot sorted the client out by implementing the ideal content structure for higher education digital experiences that rely on heavier content publishing workflows.
The content structure now presents a tidier and easier navigation experience for website visitors looking to browse or download content from the website based on a content format (newsletter, brochure, program, video, books, etc.)
The same benefit applies to search engines such as Google that are able to easily index the content based on type - optimizing the ability of Modern American School content to rank higher on search engine result pages.
Enhanced User Experience
Vardot re-assessed their legacy website performance from various perspectives by canvassing the feedback from all the relevant target audiences and user groups concerned with the website.
The following challenges were identified and addressed:
- Webforms needed to be concise and easier for users. Our UI/UX and marketing teams designed a tailored user journey for all 3 webforms on the website to ensure higher conversion rates and meaningful engagement.
- Website visitors noted that they prefer a visually driven UX and as such we enabled the Modern American School content team to publish rich content and media formats such as video with full flexibility - without compromising CMS performance due to the robust media library and management in Varbase.
Why Drupal was chosen
The Modern American School has trusted Drupal since 2014, and with Vardot, it remains their ideal choice today. The CMS is tailored for superior UX, with continuous support and critical module upgrades. Backed by Vardot’s Drupal expertise, it enables flexible integrations with any tools, a seamless content publishing experience, and powerful personalization through Layout Builder. The platform also ensures better on-site SEO and implements best practices in accessibility, privacy, and security.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
