Background

IDP Education co-owns the IELTS English-language test used for work, study and migration purposes across the world. More than 10,000 organisations trust and accept IELTS as a true indicator of an applicant’s English-language proficiency.

The challenge

Through research, I found that IDP Education managed 28 microsites for their IELTS product across their global network. Stakeholder interviews revealed duplicate effort from digital marketing and content, and inconsistent branding, and voice and messaging was inconsistent across the network.

Focus groups and user interviews told us the customer journey for the IELTS product was disjointed and that the business was missing opportunities to build brand awareness, trust and guide users at crucial touchpoints in their test prep journey. Users often felt frustrated and unsupported with their product experience and confused as to what was official IELTS content.

Opportunity

We set off to design a digital solution that could maintain and grow a global community for the IELTS brand. This brought a disjointed global brand together again and delivered an improved user experience that guided users through their test preparation journey.

How we did it

QUANTITATIVE CONTENT AUDIT

To understand the content landscape, I looked at:

• page views, time on page and bounce rate analytics across the 28 microsites on Google Analytics

• topics and frustrations users talked about on Quora, Reddit and other commonly used social channels

• keyword and topic research in SEMrush.

I saw trends emerge around 3 key themes:

• discovery

• preparation

• results

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS

I held interviews with regional teams across the globe - from marketing teams to test centre managers and operations leads.

I asked about trends in their specific markets, their primary and secondary audiences and the frustrations they faced with the digital and product experience.

Hotjar

I wanted to get a better understanding of how users were interacting with the IELTS product. I looked 3 key websites to see where they were dropping off, getting frustrated, and in general, how they were with content.

I looked at:

• 150 recordings

• heatmaps on top 3 pages visited

It was evident that users were coming to the websites to:

• log in to my.ieltsessentials.com to manage their booking or access results

• access learning materials

• understand marking criteria

• book their test

FOCUS GROUPS

To help shape our style, tone and voice across our digital channels, I ran a focus group with past and future IELTS test-takers in Melbourne. The focus group had participants from different stages of the user journey and was limited to 5 participants.

I presented participants with a prototype app containing the current IELTS style and a second, plain English alternative. They were given a task to complete and found they completed the plain English prototype faster, and with less pauses and mistakes.

IA testing

I recruited 30 test-takers from 10 key markets to help with the taxonomy and structure of the new website. Participants were a mixture of people who were new to the IELTS experience and those that had taken the IELTS test before.

Card sort

Participants were presented with 60 cards relating to the IELTS experience and asked to:

• group items

• label the groups

Tree test

Participants were presented with 9 scenarios about the IELTS experience and asked to find the page in the sitemap where they would find their answer.

I analysed the results from both the tree test and the card sort and developed a new sitemap. I tested the proposed sitemap with the same participants to see if they had greater success in finding the information they needed.

There were 3 trends that emerged from the card sort. Participants grouped content by:

• intent (work, study, or migration purposes)

• stage of user journey (prepare, book, find results)

• score (how to get a band 7)

Domain and content modelling

To solve one of the biggest problems - duplicate effort from digital marketing and content - I needed to find a solution that could help us build a connected content community. I worked closely with the project team to develop and manage an EOI.

With the tech stack a headless solution, we were now able to build content that was platform agnostic and shareable. I worked closely with the project manager to build out a domain model for the IELTS product and ran weekly content modelling sessions.

This helped us design better systems and content that was:

• reusable across a global network and across multiple platforms

• future-proof.

I worked closely with the content coordinators and an IELTS expert to audit the content on ieltsessentials.com. We broke the content out into the newly built content models and rewrote them to the new IELTS style.

Content strategy

I worked closely with the social media strategist to build out a content planning and delivery process. This process took a holistic approach to content. Rather than planning content per channel, we broke the content out by themes and topics. This allowed us to share content on channels that our users expected them on.

Results

As a result, we were able to redefine the IELTS digital landscape by:

• introducing structured content to support a create once, publish everywhere model

• building a headless CMS solution

• creating an omnichannel strategy that supported users with the content they wanted, when they wanted it and in the formated they expected it

• implementing a new tone and voice, and style guides to guide and support users through their test preparation journey

• building a resource library for regional teams

• building a connected community with hands-on CMS training, support and guides.