Ecommerce transformation puts City Lit in position to grow and evolve.
Training business ramps up ecommerce capability and user experience through partnership with Williams Commerce and Adobe Commerce.
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Challenge
Unlike many adult education colleges, London-based City Lit’s provision is more retail focused. Courses start multiple times in a year, and the aim is to nurture skills rather than prioritize a list of qualifications. This reflects the college’s foundations – City Lit is the place to go to kickstart a new career or pursue expertise in a personal interest, be it intellectual or practical.
Increasing competition and opportunity in the global e-learning market both loom large, with the UK education services industry set to grow by $9.94bn during 2021-2025, according to Technavio. User experience (UX) at prospective and existing customer touchpoints is a key differentiator, whether people want online or in-classroom courses.
Working with transformation partner Williams Commerce and Adobe Commerce, the teams orchestrated a smooth upgrade from Magento 1 to take advantage of the Adobe Commerce Cloud ecosystem. This positioned City Lit to pursue ambitious growth plans without a trace of business or customer disruption.
Objectives
- Differentiate the business through exemplary user experience
- Increase convenience for potential and existing customers
- Integrate payment and customer support
- Leverage the extensive Adobe Commerce Cloud ecosystem
- Improve content-led email marketing
- Safe migration of product, content and customer information
where great user experience is the difference between a sale...
We were looking for an ecommerce platform to support our new post-Covid online learning provision. A solution that could cope with over 30,000 students and 70,000 enrolments annually, allowing us to operate in an ever-competitive market – where great user experience is the difference between a sale or no sale.
Results
The right partnership powers positive change
Power positive change through partnership
Adobe Commerce 2.3 was chosen by City Lit for the quality and performance that would be needed to improve organizational resilience and financial growth – much of which pivots around creating superior UX. As Citylit.ac.uk is the business’s main interface, it was vital that the migration of data and content was managed effectively.
With a high level of customization on Magento 1, Williams Commerce faced a significant challenge. While planning and executing the evolution of the platform, high quality UX had to be a constant. And the application needed to meet Adobe Cloud Commerce security and infrastructure standards, while business- critical workflows stayed disruption free. This meant rigorous testing of data migration to include any factors not captured during the discovery phase.
It was a huge effort to migrate the complexities of the platform. Success came through massive team collaboration between Williams Commerce, City Lit and Adobe.
Adobe Commerce platforms business growth
Working on snagging issues in the live environment paid dividends – mitigating issues to see a smooth platform launch. Now the teams are taking advantage of new features that enrich Adobe Commerce’s core functionality and customer UX to motorize City Lit’s big plans for growth.
We have trusted partners in Adobe and Williams Commerce
The greatest compliment I can pay Adobe and Williams Commerce teams is that not one customer noticed the precise transition. It was a spectacular result when so many technical builds and migrations result in a dip in traffic, conversion, and ranking. And now, we have a much greater ability to affect conversion rate optimization (CRO) and UX changes, which enhances...
