Responsive multi-lingual web design

Cambridge University Press (CUP) is the world-renowned publishing business of the University of Cambridge.

One of its key publishing areas is English Language Teaching. Many ELT customers are self-study language learners, and CUP wanted to boost sales to this market by increasing its appeal to potential customers and building a relationship with them.

So they asked us to design a web site specifically for English learners worldwide. Their brief required that the site would:

• Attract and retain more customers and spread the word via social media.
• Showcase print and digital products in a way that was clear and easy to navigate.
• Be written in simple but engaging English.
• Include some translated pages for the big self-study markets in Korea and Japan, with the potential for pages in other languages as well.
• Have an easy-to-use content management system so that CUP could keep the site fresh and engaging with regular updates and additions.
• Be ready within a tight deadline, to tie in with the start of the academic year in Europe.

Both the ELT division and the associated Cambridge Dictionaries Online had active communities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. However, none was effectively integrated with the main web site.

We knew that the students would often be visiting the site on their mobile devices – so we needed to design a responsive site that would look great and work perfectly on smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers.

(Another good reason for this is that Google supports smartphone-optimised sites and regards them as industry best practice – and it makes sense to be in Google’s good books!)

To appeal to a younger target audience, we designed a funky digital brand identity for the web site. We integrated the business’s thriving social media groups with the site, making it easier for people to share and connect with others. We also developed some clever Facebook “open graph” integration which meant users could not only ‘Like’ books, but also ‘Recommend” them.

The new site shows a steady increase in the number of unique visitors, as well as repeat visits. More users are engaging with the site, following social media and adding reviews. And – most importantly for the client – online sales of their titles have increased.