The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) is responsible for the training and development of the school workforce. Every year the TDA website receives over 6.5 million regular visitors.
Challenge
The TDA’s goal was to transform the website into a key communication tool, the primary information resource, and drive recruitment particularly in Maths, Sciences and Modern Languages. To reduce costs while increasing usability, the TDA sought more robust and resilient platforms for content management, digital marketing and back-office integration.
Key reasons for selecting Sitecore:
- TDA was in the situation of having previously selected Sitecore for their technology platform; however the website structure needed to be extended to meet current requirements
- Increasing SEO via Sitecore’s search engine-friendly architecture and integration with Google Search Appliance
- Functionality to deliver landing pages quickly and cost-effeciently
- Ability to deliver a highly scalable and extensible platform to meet the department’s future needs
- Can deliver efficient way to share data which is owned by various stakeholders and shared with multiple back-end systems
- Ability to delivery Multilingual content (Welsh, English)
- Functionality to deliver Mobile and multi-device optimization
Solution
The new CMS offers greater flexibility for content editors and web developers. To fulfil statutory duty to Welsh Assembly, recruitment role is published in Welsh. The team scaled down the content to make it easier for web visitors to focus on finding content that was useful by eliminating 2,500 pages. The project was developed around 11 personas that at a future date may be used for dynamic personalisation. TDA was able to move to Sitecore while maintaining its impressive SEO rankings.
Result
The TDA website was recently shortlisted for a British Interactive Media Award (BIMA) as well as The Drum Award for Digital Industries (DADI Award). Following the move to Sitecore the volume of people signing-up for a teaching career rose by 10%. For ‘priority subjects’ sign-up from subject specific pages increased from 2.54% to 6.77 %; for maths and chemistry the volume rose by over 7%. Sign-ups for the London ‘Train to Teach’ events, enrolment was up 24% and the Birmingham event was up 66%. Conversion rates for Higher Level Teaching Assistant roles rose by 258%. An analysis of the website by RedWeb has shown that the operation and cost-per-visit on the TDA website is significantly lower than other UK Trade and Investment websites.
Solution Special Ingredients