City College Dublin

Bespoke Web Design

After 8 years providing ongoing support and maintenance to the City Education Group and all their college websites we were entrusted with the development of their new site to coincide with their rebrand to City College Dublin.

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Project Overview

We designed and developed a fully bespoke WordPress website for City College Dublin to support a complete institutional rebrand under City Education Group. The project involved custom design and development across all key templates, including the homepage, course archive, and course detail pages, with a focus on clear navigation and an intuitive user experience. A major feature of the build was the development of a custom enrolment system with a tailored payment workflow, allowing for deposits, part-payments, and staged instalments. The result is a modern, scalable platform built to meet the specific operational needs of the college and support its continued growth.

The Process

The project kicked off with in-depth competitor analysis, focusing on key players in the education sector to identify effective UX patterns, navigation structures, and course presentation techniques. This research directly informed the strategy for the new site, ensuring City College Dublin could match and exceed sector standards. We then moved into the planning phase, creating detailed wireframes to map out user journeys, content hierarchy, and navigation flows. Once these were approved, we developed high-fidelity design mockups aligned with the new brand identity, using a flexible design system to ensure consistency across all templates.

Following sign-off on designs, we transitioned into a bespoke development phase. The site was custom-built on WordPress, with tailored templates for the homepage, course archive, and individual course pages. A significant part of the development focused on building a custom enrolment system that supports flexible payment options, including deposits, part-payments, and staged instalments. We also oversaw the full content migration from three legacy websites into a single unified platform. This included careful mapping of existing content to new structures, content clean-up, and formatting to maintain quality and consistency across the board.

As the project approached completion, we managed the entire go-live process. This involved a detailed launch plan with a comprehensive redirect strategy to preserve SEO equity, implementation of on-page SEO best practices, and technical checks to ensure performance, security, and reliability. We also handled integration with key third-party platforms such as Humm for student finance and Salesforce for lead management, ensuring all data flows were tested and fully operational. The result is a robust, future-proof site designed to support the college’s growth and streamline the online enrolment experience.