8 Lessons I Learned in our Website Rebuild

We started building a new website for Classroom Secrets in January 2021 (yep… long time ago). There were a few reasons we did this:

1. We’d built our first website on Wordpress and that was great as a starting point, but it was struggling to handle a website with over 10,000 pages.
   

2. Our plugins were plugging gaps all over the place – propping things up and generally getting in each others’ way.
   

3. We wanted to do more, to have options to integrate, and that just wasn’t possible with what we had.
   

4. We wanted more control over scaling the website at busy times.
   

5. We wanted to be able to offer a range of nice features that weren’t possible with our old set-up, such as saving resources to download later and being able to see what you’ve previously downloaded.
   

6. We used one of the earliest member plugins and it just wasn’t keeping up with how we wanted to run the website.

So we embarked on a (very long) journey. A small UK company, feeling flattened by Covid, with no experience running such a big, complex project. Here’s what we learned…

1. A website and a platform are two different things.

   We quickly realised that the backend work of how our platform would operate was 80% of the project, and the UX and design was 20%. We didn’t want to just put a nice spin on an already struggling platform, we wanted to build from the ground up and bake in ‘possibility’ from the beginning. Possibility for Classroom Secrets’ future and how our company can help the children of the world achieve their potential not only in 2025, but in the years to come.

2. Even the best plans do not go to plan.

   We moved the launch date many times. We originally thought we’d launch in 2022 (we even called it Project 22). We carefully planned out parts of the project that just didn’t go to plan. It was all part of the learning process.
   

3. Perfection isn’t important, progress is.

   We never aimed for perfection. We aimed to be in a place where we can quickly iterate and improve and that’s what we’re working with now, an MVP (minimum viable product) that we can develop going forward.
   

4. Launch is not the end, it’s the beginning.

   With the previous point in mind, our new website gives us a platform to begin our user experience journey in a way we haven’t been able to do before as a company. It’s not the completion of our new platform, it’s the beginning of it.
   

5. The team creates the platform’s success. Sounds obvious, but there are three key things you need in the team working on your project:
   

   • The team need to 100% believe in what you are trying to deliver.

   • You need a team of specialists, not just a website designer, e.g. (developers (with differing front and backend skillsets), designers, UX testers, CRM experts, project manager, and in our case, product specialists)

   • You need the best people working on it. Mediocre won’t do. Half commitment won’t do.
     

6. The time needed requires patience and persistence.
   
   When things are tough, the team will look to you and will learn and gain strength from the patience you display and how you press on and persist despite the setbacks.
   

7. Build in listening time.

   We all want our shiny new thing to be finished as fast as possible, but there’s real value in seeking feedback from your customers and taking time to really listen and understand how they use your current website and how they could use your future website.
   

8. You need to invest.
   
   Probably four times more than you thought you would! That’s the problem with such a complex agile project, things can easily run on, so it’s important to know how you can cater for new budget needs.

If you’re interested in having a nosey at our new website, take a look around!