client
deliverables
Scaling Course Discovery Across a Global Learning Marketplace
edX operates one of the world’s largest digital learning catalogs, spanning professional certificates, microcredentials, and degree programs from top universities and institutions. As the platform expanded beyond MOOCs into credentialed and revenue-driving programs, content scale became a limiting factor.
When Content Volume Becomes a Growth Constraint
With more than 4,000 offerings and multiple learner personas — career switchers, working professionals, degree seekers, and enterprise learners — edX faced a common higher-ed digital challenge:
The problem wasn’t course quality. It was discoverability, governance, and speed to market.
edX and its parent company, 2U, partnered with Adapt to address these constraints at the platform and operating-model level, not just through design or SEO tweaks.
The Core Challenge: Growth Without Fragmentation
Prior to the engagement, edX’s digital teams faced three structural issues that limited marketing and growth impact:
For a platform competing in an increasingly crowded eLearning market, this created organizational drag — not just UX issues.
Strategic Objectives
Rather than approaching this as a redesign, the work focused on unlocking operational leverage:
ATTRACT
Increase qualified learner acquisition by enabling faster, more relevant landing experiences across organic and paid channels.
MATCH
Improve learner–program alignment by structuring content so users could understand fit — not just browse inventory.
The Solution: Decoupling Content Creation From Platform Complexity
Adapt worked with edX to implement Contentful as a central content orchestration layer, integrated with edX’s existing course databases.
What Changed Architecturally
Course data remained authoritative in internal systems
Marketing and narrative content moved to Contentful
Pages were dynamically assembled using:
Structured course metadata
Modular editorial content
Reusable components governed by design and brand rules
This allowed edX to scale content output without duplicating data or increasing engineering dependency.
What This Enabled
1. Marketing Teams Regained Speed
Editors could launch and iterate pages without developer support
New program launches no longer required bespoke builds
Campaign landing pages could be adapted per audience or channel
2. SEO Became Systemic, Not Manual
Structured content improved indexability across thousands of URLs
Program-level pages could be optimized without breaking templates
Internal linking and taxonomy became consistent by design
3. Governance at Scale
Design system enforcement reduced fragmentation
Content reuse minimized duplication across programs and credentials
Brand and compliance requirements remained intact
Measurable Outcomes
Following launch:
~1,000 new pages published by the content team without additional hiring
Content creation centralized into a single system of record
Reduced reliance on engineering for routine marketing needs
Improved foundation for organic traffic growth and campaign scalability
For higher-ed and eLearning leaders, this represents a shift in operating model, not just tooling.
Performance Optimization
As part of ongoing platform improvements, edX enabled Cloudflare image optimization to improve load performance across high-traffic pages.
The intent was performance and accessibility first:
Faster page loads for global users
Reduced bandwidth consumption
Improved Core Web Vitals
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