EAB

EAB uses research, technology, and insightful consulting to address pressing challenges within the education industry. In 2017, after growing to serve more than 1,200 academic institutions in its first decade, EAB separated from its parent company, The Advisory Board Company to become a stand alone business. Today EAB partners with more than 1,500 schools, colleges, and universities to accelerate progress and drive results.

While EAB had a decade of experience delivering exceptional products and services, the brand and website reflected times gone by. EAB leadership knew the new company needed to establish its own brand voice, look, and feel, and engaged a design firm to lead the visual transformation. 10up was later engaged to execute the new website design, migrating the site from Sitecore to WordPress, expanding membership options, and developing more robust analytics tracking and data intelligence.

Visual Design Translation

When 10up stepped into its partnership with EAB, the website visual redesign was nearly complete. The most significant challenge ahead: 10up was to take advantage of the WordPress block editor and build out the site using a modular, component-based method, but the new designs were not rooted in a modular/componentized approach. Moving from Sitecore’s traditional page editing experience to the new and more modern WordPress block-based editing experience requires a different mindset.

The first step was a comprehensive review and evaluation of the website design to understand the intention behind major design elements and the relationships between similar components across page templates. During the short period of overlap, the 10up user experience team consulted with the design firm to clarify user experience intentions and functional objectives.

With 70 different design components identified, 10up worked with EAB stakeholders to simplify design variations and consolidate one-off design elements into flexible components, constraining complexity and, thus, engineering costs. The result was a collection of thirty distinct WordPress blocks that include flexible content layout options.

10up also worked with EAB to translate the homepage design into a dynamic visual presentation with thoughtful visual animations.

Platform Migration and Salesforce Integration

10up migrated the existing EAB membership site from Sitecore to WordPress, facilitated its integration with Salesforce, and supported the EAB team in efforts to create new landing pages.

All membership data and content access permissions for the EAB site are managed in Salesforce. When a member logs in on the EAB site, a call is made to the Salesforce API that gathers data on the member’s access level. Similarly, any member behaviors that are saved between sessions are also managed in Salesforce.

10up worked closely with EAB’s Salesforce architect to extend the membership management functionality to WordPress. 10up provided specifications for the Salesforce updates to ensure a seamless integration, with EAB’s architect setting up Apex classes to interact with the Salesforce API and expose endpoints. The EAB membership access levels were mirrored in WordPress through custom taxonomies, post-level permissions, a customizable member-only navigation menu, and new freemium membership offerings.

The Freemium membership system provides tokens to organizations like universities who can distribute them to individual members that spend the tokens to view premium content. By offering samples of the broader premium content, EAB was able to more effectively prompt membership upgrades and encourage greater engagement. EAB saw early signs of success after the site launch, with freemium tokens used frequently and the first freemium-related upsell coming very soon after launch.

After 10up built the new site and custom component block library, a training guide was developed to walk EAB through each component — what it does, how it works, and how to test it. Armed with the user guide, EAB performed user acceptance testing (UAT) — testing by the client to accept the software — and provided feedback. This gave EAB a hands-on crash course in WordPress, which expedited the content publishing process in preparation for the website launch.

While 10up migrated the existing EAB blog and case study archive to the new WordPress platform, EAB was responsible for building all of their landing pages with the new custom block library and loading in the new content. Even in a highly compressed timeline, they were able to create compelling, eye-catching, unique landing pages — a testament to EAB’s willingness to learn and WordPress’ user-friendly admin experience.

Data Intelligence Consulting

In addition to delivering user experience and engineering services, 10up’s Audience and Revenue team stepped in to help EAB establish a solid foundation for gathering real time data intelligence. Once Google Analytics was configured, the funnel was expanded to include more data points and track more goals and events. 10up provided strategic consulting to help EAB hone in on the most useful data, configure tracking through WordPress and Google Tag Manager, and generate meaningful reports. This provided EAB the know how to independently manage and understand their real time analytics.

Post Launch Results

Post launch, EAB leadership was pleased to report that the month after the launch was their biggest month to date. Results from the first full month included:

• A record high number of monthly visitors.
• An all-time low bounce rate.
• Significant use of new freemium offerings and the first freemium to paid member conversion.
• Visitors who used the new on site search were more engaged.
• Increased time on site.

To learn more about 10up creates digital experiences that advance organizational goals and marketing objectives, contact 10up today.