The Client
Bridge Mills Galway Language Centre is an adult English language school located in Galway, Ireland. The school was established in 1987 and is accredited by EAQUALS, ACELS, MEI, ALTO, QQI, Quality English, Cambridge Examinations and Cambridge Admissions Testing.
The school offers a wide range of courses, including general English, exam preparation, business English, and teacher training. They also offer online lessons and self-guided study packs and boast a strong reputation for providing high-quality English language instruction.
The Challenge
Our client, a local language school with a global student base, was confronted with a pressing issue that threatened the core of their digital strategy.
The platform hosting their existing website was scheduled for discontinuation, a development that put the school in a precarious position. This wasn’t just about finding a new digital home; it was about safeguarding their online presence, which had become integral to their client reach and reputation.
A New Digital Home
Our task was clear: to create a new digital platform that not only met the immediate technical needs of the language school but also addressed their deeper concerns about client retention, market presence, and seamless transition. The solution needed to be strategic, empathetic to the school’s community, and forward-looking in its design and functionality.
The need for a new digital home was apparent, but there were also additional, unique requirements due to the nature of their business.
Multilingual Website Design
As a language school catering to students from various linguistic backgrounds, it was essential to have a website that could communicate effectively in multiple languages. This feature was not just a convenience but a necessity to reflect the school’s commitment to language learning and cultural diversity.
Clearer Course Information
The school offered a wide range of language courses, but the existing website failed to present this information in a clear and accessible manner. Prospective students found it challenging to locate and understand the specifics of different language programmes.
Improved Website Navigation
The goal was to streamline the website’s navigation system, making it easier for students and visitors to find the information they needed, enhancing their overall experience on the site.
These challenges presented us with an opportunity to not only build a new website but to create a platform that truly represented the school’s ethos and met the diverse needs of its students. This was going to be a big multilingual website design project – but nothing that we couldn’t handle.
Our Approach
In response to our client’s urgent need, we adopted a comprehensive approach that addressed both the technical and user-experience aspects of their new website.
Selecting WordPress as the New Digital Platform
Understanding the school’s requirement for a robust, flexible, and user-friendly platform, we chose WordPress as their new website home. This decision was driven by WordPress’s renowned flexibility, its wide array of features, and its compatibility with various WP plugins, making it an ideal solution for the school’s diverse and dynamic needs.
Implementing WPML for Multilingual Capability
Recognizing the global nature of the school’s student base, we employed the WPML (WordPress Multilingual) plugin. This powerful tool enabled us to efficiently translate the site into seven key languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish.
This multilingual functionality was crucial in ensuring that the school could effectively communicate with and cater to its diverse student population, enhancing accessibility and inclusivity.
Revamping the Course Information Page
To address the challenge of presenting course information clearly, we completely redesigned the course information page. Our goal was to create a user-friendly interface that would allow students to easily navigate through the different language courses offered by the school.
We organised the courses in a clear, intuitive layout and made detailed course information available in PDF format for easy access and download. This redesign not only improved the clarity and accessibility of course information but also contributed to an overall more professional and engaging website experience.
Through this strategic approach, we aimed to not only provide a seamless transition to a new digital platform but also to enhance the school’s online presence, ensuring it remained a preferred choice for current and prospective students in the ever-competitive educational landscape.
The Results
With a new digital home and multilingual website design, our efforts yielded remarkable results for the client.
Robust Multilingual Website Design with Optimised Performance
The newly designed website emerged as a robust digital platform, supporting multiple languages without compromising on crucial performance metrics.
We achieved optimal site speed, ensuring quick load times, smooth interactivity, and visual stability across all language versions. This technical proficiency provided a seamless user experience, crucial for retaining and attracting a global audience.
Significant Increase in SEO Keyword Rankings
A dramatic improvement was seen in the website’s search engine optimization (SEO). By carefully crafting the site’s content and structure, including multilingual capabilities, we significantly increased the ranking for a variety of SEO keywords.
This enhancement in SEO not only improved the site’s visibility in search engines but also made it more accessible to prospective students from different regions, thereby expanding the school’s digital reach.
Creation of a Welcoming Digital Home for a Global Audience
The new website became more than just a digital space; it transformed into a welcoming platform for students from around the world. The multilingual design and user-friendly navigation made the school’s courses and resources more accessible to a diverse audience, reinforcing the school’s commitment to inclusivity and global education.
This new digital home resonates with the school’s ethos, offering a space where language barriers are diminished, and educational opportunities are broadened.
Through these results, the language school not only regained its online footing but also enhanced its capacity to engage and educate students across the globe. The project’s success was a testament to the power of thoughtful multilingual web design and its impact on an institution’s global presence and accessibility.
Why Is Multilingual Website Design Important?
Enhanced SEO Efficiency
One of the primary benefits of a multilingual website design lies in its SEO advantages. When you have multiple language options integrated into a single website, it centralises your SEO efforts.
Instead of dividing your resources and strategies across multiple sites for different languages, a multilingual site allows you to focus on optimising a single domain. This leads to a more consolidated and effective SEO strategy.
Search engines favour websites with high-quality, diverse content, and a multilingual site naturally increases your content’s reach and relevance, potentially improving your rankings across different language searches.
Streamlined User Experience
A multilingual website offers a more streamlined and cohesive user experience compared to managing separate sites for each language. Users can easily switch between languages as per their preference, which enhances user engagement and satisfaction.
This seamless transition between languages on a single platform is not only user-friendly but also maintains the aesthetic and functional consistency of your website.
Cost-Effectiveness and Simplified Management
Building and maintaining one website with multiple language options is more cost-effective than creating separate websites for each language. It simplifies the management of your online presence, as updates and changes need to be implemented only once, and can be easily replicated across all language versions.
This approach saves time and resources in website management and ensures that all language versions stay up-to-date and consistent with each other.
Multilingual website design structure is a strategic choice that offers numerous benefits, from improved SEO and user experience to cost-effectiveness and a wider global reach. It is an essential component for businesses and educational institutions looking to establish a strong, inclusive, and efficient online presence in the global market.
More projects
If you enjoyed this case study, be sure to check out some of our other project reviews; Hotel Marketing Strategy | Training Website Design | How We Improved Our Client’s GT Metrix Score From C Grading to A Grading | Creative Website Design and Build for Brexit Business Advisory Service | Retail Software Website Design.
You can also follow us on our socials for the latest news and articles: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn.