metajive

School
of
Rock

Music / Nominee

metajive

Music

Nominee

School of Rock’s main KPI is lead conversion and that informed nearly every technical decision made. SEO was prioritized, and the site is highly optimized to rank highly from both a content and tech perspective. - metajive team

Q: Can you briefly describe your project and the concept behind it?

A: School of Rock is the largest music school in the world. With 200+ schools around the world, this revolutionary home of music education is changing the way both kids and adults learn to play. School of Rock’s messaging needed to shift gears towards focusing on the actual decision-makers (parents), and demonstrating how children learn in a safe and engaging environment. School of Rock was also suffering from friction and drop off on the path to conversion. Our conversion strategy was three-fold: make it simple to convert to trial, make it a breeze to find your local school, and make it frictionless to find and purchase camps and integrated online scheduling.

Q: Talk about your initial prototypes. How did those ideas change throughout design and execution?

A: We always start broad in our mood board and trim, trim, trim. Working with the client to focus, we created a look of bold minimalism that felt true to who they were, cool to those garage rocking kids and, as well as safe and reliable for that supportive parent making the final decision.

Q: What web technologies, tools, or resources did you use to develop this?

A: PHP, Larvelll Nova, HTML 5, CSS3, Tiny PNG API integration and alot of custom coding to make 260 individual CMS's that can be controlled by each franchise owner.

Q: What influenced your chosen technical approach, and how did it go beyond past methods?

A: School of Rock’s main KPI is lead conversion and that informed nearly every technical decision made. SEO was prioritized, and the site is highly optimized to rank highly from both a content and tech perspective. In order to maximize conversion, we auto-detect the users location and show their closest schools with as much contextual information as possible. Each school has its own custom configured CMS, and there is a Yext integration that allows Franchisees to submit updated data to every listing service.

What breakthrough or “a-ha” moment did you experience when concepting or executing this project?

We were saved by the flash. We had defined the visual look and feel of this site, but the photography we had and mixed with stock never felt right. We brought in our friend Franz Steiner to help with our photoshoot at a famous LA venue. We opened the club at 7am and put on a full rock concert just for the shoot. The assets carried the site from good to great; we even created the school’s, now signature, deep black and white portraits with a smoke machine and a black wall as a "pick up shot" we weren't planning on.

Q: How did you balance your creative and technical capabilities with the client’s brand?

A: We were building the client’s brand back up on the fly. We let our UX team lead the charge to make sure everything was accounted for and developed some innovative solutions. We paired that with a bold and reductive visual language that was focused on setting type up to be read and for messages to be made clear.

Q: How did the final product defy your expectations?

A: Conversion, We increased our main KPI's by 445 and 250% respectively. We created a lead funnel that won't quit and continues to support the organization as it scales internationally.

Q: Why is this an exciting time to create new digital experiences? How does your team fit into this?

A: People are tired of being sold. Our team is focusing on helping brands represent who they are with a humanity that people appreciate, by making information gathering quick, yet providing the depth needed for those that want to dive deeper.

School of Rock