Designing a Future-Ready Digital Platform for a School That Is More Than a School
Pierce, one of Greece’s most established educational institutions, partnered with Backbone to redesign its digital presence in a way that reflects its evolving vision: a school that nurtures each student’s talents from early childhood through graduation, while supporting future growth, new educational units, and expanding infrastructure.
Pierce approached Backbone with the goal of redesigning its website to better support its long-term educational vision. The platform needed to clearly communicate the school’s philosophy, values, and academic offerings, while serving as the primary source of information for parents of children aged 3 to 18.
The website also had to support the launch of new educational units, specifically Kindergarten and Elementary, while presenting all school levels in a clear and cohesive way
The Challenge
From a design perspective, the website needed to balance different emotional tones. It had to feel playful and nurturing for younger grades, while remaining serious and academic for Gymnasium and Lyceum.
From a strategic and operational standpoint, the website needed to become the school’s primary communication engine without increasing the workload of the marketing and communications team.
Traditional CMS workflows would not support the volume, frequency, and variety of content Pierce produces, particularly around news, events, and announcements. Backbone was responsible not only for design and development, but also for defining a system that could scale with the school’s growth while remaining intuitive for non-technical users.
We restructured the site’s information architecture to ensure parents could quickly validate their key decisionmaking criteria, including reputation, educational philosophy, extracurricular programs, success rates, and overall school culture. At the same time, the experience naturally guided users toward inquiry and enrollment.
During the design and planning phases, AI-assisted workflows were used to support content modeling and architectural decisions. This allowed us to identify patterns across educational content, anticipate future editorial needs, and design flexible templates that could evolve over time without structural changes.
To support Pierce’s communication needs, Backbone designed and implemented a custom admin layer tailored specifically to the school’s marketing and communications team.
Built on Backbone’s Expresia platform, the admin system enables editors to manage news articles, events, announcements, and galleries quickly and consistently, without technical assistance. AI-assisted content classification helps organize and surface relevant content across the site, reducing manual effort and improving discoverability.
Outcome
The new Pierce website launched as a flexible, future-ready digital platform that supports the school’s mission today and scales for tomorrow.
Pierce now benefits from:
By combining thoughtful design, intelligent workflows, and AI-assisted systems, Backbone delivered a digital experience that reflects Pierce’s identity as more than a school, but a living and evolving educational ecosystem.
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