Website Migration (blogs)

Industry

Ed-Tech

•

Client

upGrad

•

Platform

Web & Mobile

•

Timeline

16 weeks

In-short, a little about the project…

upGrad Abroad is a vertical of upGrad focused on study-abroad aspirants, offering exam preparation, country guides, and long-form informational content.

This project focused on redesigning content-heavy pages and migrating them from WordPress to an internal CMS to improve engagement, discoverability, and organic lead conversion at scale.

What problems were we facing?

  1. Organic traffic and lead conversion were underperforming despite strong SEO inputs

  2. Article and exam pages showed higher bounce rates and lower visitor-to-lead (V2L) ratios compared to non-article pages

  3. Content experience was fragmented due to platform (wordpress) and CMS limitations

Let's understand the problem in depth

We analyzed article vs non-article pages using two key metrics:

Bounce Rate

The percentage of website visitors who view only one page and then leave, without clicking any links or taking further action, indicating a lack of engagement

V2L Ratio

The proportion of visitors to a website that is converted into leads in a given period

Key findings

  1. Article pages were built on WordPress, while non-article pages were on an internal CMS

  2. Article and exam pages consistently performed worse than other sections

  3. Comparing against similar ed-tech platforms showed the same gap

Further investigation revealed multiple issues with WordPress:

  1. Frequent 502 errors, affecting reliability and SEO

  2. Inability to support dynamic lead forms (users were redirected, increasing drop-offs)

  3. High dependency on developers for even small changes

  4. Poor flexibility for experimentation and personalization

So how did we strategise the solution?

We decided to:

Migrate article and exam pages from WordPress to the internal CMS

This included designing:

  • Article pages

  • Author pages

  • Article category pages

  • Redesigned exam sub-navigation (desktop & mobile)

What were some key design decisions?

  1. Making the First Fold Content-First

Problem:

The first fold was cluttered with filler elements, banners, and secondary CTAs, pushing core content below the fold—especially on mobile.

Decision:

  • Removed non-essential elements

  • Prioritized headline, metadata, and content entry

  • Made layouts more compact and scannable

Impact:

  • Users could immediately understand page relevance

  • Reduced unnecessary scrolling and visual noise

  • Supported improvements in bounce rate and read time

  1. Simplifying Exam Page Navigation (Desktop & Mobile)

Problem:

Exam pages had overlapping navigation patterns:

  • Same click triggered both dropdowns and page navigations

  • Global menu, sub-menu, and breadcrumb competed for attention

  • Mobile experience amplified confusion

Decision:

  • Clearly differentiated:

    • Global menu

    • Contextual sub-menu

    • Breadcrumb

  • Kept all sub-menu elements on the same page for SEO consistency

Impact:

  • Reduced cognitive load

  • Improved navigability across long exam pages

  • Maintained SEO structure while improving usability

  1. Compact Author & Stakeholder Attribution

Problem:

Articles often involved multiple contributors, but showing all authors upfront consumed valuable first-fold space.

Decision:

  • Introduced stacked avatars with an expandable view

  • Allowed users to view full contributor details on demand

  • Gave content teams flexibility to assign multiple authors/editors

Impact:

  • Preserved space for content

  • Solved internal credit-sharing needs

  • Maintained trust and credibility signals for users

  1. SEO-Driven Internal Linking Architecture

Problem:

Content existed in silos, limiting crawlability and contextual discovery.

Decision:

  • Designed an internal linking structure connecting:

    • Homepage

    • Article homepage

    • Individual articles

    • Author pages

    • Category pages

Impact:

  • Improved crawl depth and indexing

  • Strengthened topical authority

  • Enabled both users and search engines to navigate content more effectively

What did we achieve?

  • Improved average search position, showing enhanced page quality signals

  • Consistent increase in organic sessions over time

~82%

Increase in clicks compared to the previous period

~52%

Growth in impressions, indicating better SEO visibility

~20%

Improvement in CTR, reflecting stronger intent matching

source: Looker Studio integrated with Google Analytics

What I learnt after hand-off?

  • UX decisions can directly influence SEO and growth metrics

  • Designing content at scale requires balancing readability, performance, and system constraints

  • Platform choices (CMS) significantly affect design flexibility and experimentation

What I would improve next?

As I left the organisation, these were the improvements I suggested to be done:

  • Infographics section in CMS. Currently we use images for that, so we are looking a way to add svg to the formats

  • Improving the functionality of the sub-menu for the exam pages

  • Integrating the generic blog thumbnails for blogs without banner images

DESIGNED BY VIVEK BISHT

DESIGNED BY VIVEK BISHT