User research on the Get Into Teaching website showed that users wanted to see information on what it’s like to teach specific subjects.
Originally, the website only had subject pages for maths, computing and physics and these sat under the ‘Is teaching right for me?’ section.
We renamed the ‘Is teaching right for me?’ section to ‘Life as a teacher’ and focused on this section being inspirational to people considering teaching as a career.
The subject pages now sit under the ‘Life as a teacher’ section, on a new category page ‘Explore subjects’.
Updating the subject page content and design
As well as creating new subject pages, the existing pages needed updating.
We updated the design by:
- removing an image component that didn’t align with our brand guidelines
- making sure the styles used on the page were consistent with other pages
- utilising a new header component we had created for our landing pages that included an image
Based on user research, we needed to make the subject pages more inspirational, so people could find out what it’s like to teach specific subjects.
The new pages included:
- the benefits of teaching in general
- the benefits of teaching a specific subject
- how pupils benefit from learning a specific subject and what career it could lead to
- details from the national curriculum for each subject
- what degrees candidates have who apply for teacher training in specific subjects
Creating common text components in GitHub
As we created the pages, we realised that a lot of the content was the same or very similar for each subject. For example, the benefits of being a teacher were the same for each subject, with only the name of the subject changing.
We had to create 14 subject pages in total, including overhauling the existing 3 subject pages. Creating new content for each page would be labour intensive and involved copying and pasting large chunks of text which needed small changes to each of them. As so much of the content was the same on each page, it also meant that if the text needed changing on one page, it would have to be manually changed on all the other pages too.
To make the process easier, we worked with the developers on the team to create common text components which could be used across all the subject pages, and elsewhere on the site if needed. We were able to create variables in the common content components so that specific subjects would show on the subject page.
Component
Replacing the content with a component
Depending on the subject, each page has around 12 content components. These components include content on:
- funding
- support and mentoring
- qualifications needed to teach
- quotations from teachers and teacher training advisers
As the content in the components is largely generic, it means we can use the components on other pages of the website too. This will make it easier for us to add inspirational quotes and information throughout the site.
It also means we'll only need to update one file if we need to make changes to the components in future, making it quicker and easier to maintain the website.