All work
Resume
Context
Parents check fees and admissions before they enquire. Cornerstone’s 2022 site had neither page.
The school had strong material: a Cambridge examination centre since 2022, a 25-student class cap and an IGCSE pathway. The site hid all of it.
The constraint: 8 to 12 pages, a fixed budget, a 10 Oct Open Day deadline, and content that depended on school staff.
Discovery
I reviewed the old site against usability heuristics on desktop and mobile. It scored 3/10. 4 problems sat above the rest:
- Every page title and footer read “Cornerstone Store”, left over from an old WooCommerce install.
- Every page carried a noindex tag, so Google could not list the school.
- No page covered fees or admissions steps.
- “Contact Us” was the weakest link in the nav, and no page asked parents to enquire.
I then benchmarked 8 schools against their live navigation: 5 direct competitors in Johor Bahru and 3 in Singapore.
| Pattern | Schools with it |
|---|---|
| Curriculum and Admissions | 8 of 8 |
| News or events | 7 of 8 |
| Fees published | 6 of 8 |
| Facilities page | 4 of 8 |
| Named staff bios | 3 of 8 |
| Testimonials page | 2 of 8 |
My first pass used search results because my browser tool was down. A re-check on the live sites moved 2 counts: fees from 5 to 6, facilities from 1 to 4. I logged both corrections in the benchmark instead of swapping the numbers quietly.
Decisions
Full fees, not a range
6 of 8 schools publish fees. Paragon, the closest curriculum match, does not. I recommended a Fees page on that majority plus the old site’s zero fee visibility. The school chose to publish real numbers and frame affordability as a strength.
Our Teachers became Our Leadership
I proposed named teacher profiles, since 3 competitors use them to back up claims like “dedicated teachers”. The school declined to show individual teachers, so the page names only senior leadership.
Video out of the hero
The autoplay hero video repeated the logo already in the header. I moved the video to its own Home section, embedded on the page instead of linking out to YouTube.
9 value props down to 4
The old homepage stacked 9 near-identical value props. Middleton uses the same icon-block format with 5, which showed the count was the problem, not the format. Home now features 4; About Us holds the other 5.
Staff edit content, not layouts
Staff add articles and events through forms. Page layouts stay locked to Administrators, so an update cannot break the design.
Solution
The sitemap follows one parent journey: discover the school, check admissions and fees, then enquire.
01 · Discover
Proof before the pitch
Home leads with a trust bar: est. 2006, Cambridge-accredited since 2022, and IGCSE results.
02 · Admissions
Every step up front
Admissions lays out 5 steps: enquiry, a Cambridge Insight Assessment, meeting the Principal, an offer, then payment and enrolment.
03 · Fees
Real numbers
Fees shows the full annual fee for every year level, in MYR.
04 · Enquire
One clear ask
Contact Us has a form with spam protection, a consent box and a marketing opt-in. Every enquiry lands in the school inbox and in WordPress.
1 event entry updates Home and Events together and hides itself the day after the event. I also delivered a Privacy Policy in English and Bahasa Malaysia under the PDPA, a cookie notice, and a Founder’s Corner page for monthly articles.
All photos supplied by the school.
Outcomes
Live since 15 Oct 2026: 10 pages plus the Privacy Policy. Google can list the school now that noindex is gone, and the new form took its first enquiry in its first 6 days.
Google Search Console, first week, 15 to 21 Oct 2026. Preliminary: the last 2 days were still being counted.
Google Search clicks and impressions from Search Console, for now.
Reflection
We missed the Open Day. The site went live on 15 Oct, 5 days after the 10 Oct target. 2 things pushed it. The school changed its fee details 2 weeks after sending them, because staff hadn’t agreed them internally. And I learned late that the enquiry form’s reCAPTCHA needed a privacy policy, which the school then had to check for accuracy.
I had named a content owner and set reply deadlines. In the group chat, everyone assumed someone else would answer, so replies came on the deadline day itself and changes kept arriving after sign-off. Next time I’d set a content freeze, treat edits after it as change requests with a new date, leave a buffer between the content deadline and launch, and scope legal pages like a privacy policy from the start.
Next
Phase 2 connects the school management system and logins, scoped separately. The site structure leaves room for it without a rebuild.
The site is live. cornerstone.edu.my
View live site