Creating the Future with FutureLearn

During Covid the race was on to sign as many people up as possible to online education programs. Futurelearn was looking to corner their share of the market. My job, to oversee a fast rise in traffic.

The main focus.

a. Over 5 million content pages had to be optimised somehow, with this content also changing constantly as courses changed. Such a task was beyond the possibility for any human, so I devised an automated means of improving content, but only allowing the best content to be shown to Google.

b. This was at the very start of Google hinting that content was not going to be enough, it needed to really appeal. Wording, layout, readability, understand the needs of the user and matching them. I redeveloped the article section of Futurelearn, operating separately from the main inhouse development team and got a new system designed and running in 6 weeks.

c. Google loved this new approach. The higher quality content, published in a more user friendly way, and rewarded FutureLearn with a 300% increase in traffic in one year.