New KMS school website: what we did and when

Our first school section, for Keele Management School (KMS), has now gone live.

Originally published September 26, 2018

Our first school section, for Keele Management School (KMS), has now gone live.

The new section went live this week and is already scoring well against our KPI: it is achieving a 90% SEO and 86% accessibility score (Google Chrome Page Audit), and the pages have seen a 33% increase in page load speed (testmysite.withgoogle.com).

The transformation of KMS took three months in total from the initial content audit to launch (alongside the busy Clearing period!).

Initially, we worked with our Marketing colleague Jill and the KMS ‘Web Champion’ Gill to draw up a current site map of the KMS web pages using Google Sheets. This was invaluable to the planning of the new site, and the transfer of content. We also reviewed Google Analytics for the KMS pages to better inform how content was transformed and positioned on the new website.

Following this, Gill audited all KMS pages and refreshed content that was out of date. On the shared site map, Gill also marked pages that were no longer required and that could be retired during the transfer. This initial planning stage took around a week in total.

We then built the structure of the site using the new templates, and began transferring content. During the transfer stage, we also refreshed the images on the site. Again, this took around a week in total (spread over a month — Clearing and annual leave hit halfway through).

Once the draft site was built, Gill and KMS reviewed it, and we made some final page tweaks.

The site went live without a hitch, thanks in part to our robust redirect strategy. Listing all old URLs vs new equivalent URLs helped us set up URL redirects and avoid broken links.

One down, thirteen to go!